A heartbreaking reminder of how our school system is NOT fit for purpose

My post today features a school essay written by Lachlan Moss when he was in Year 11 at High School. Lachie is now one of Australia’s up and coming musical theatre stars

  I have known Lachie all his life. He was a star from the day he was born. He featured in many of my early natural resource management promos.

Jaimie Frost and Lachie Moss.  Photo Linda Faiers

Lachie essay is a  heartbreaking reminder of how our school system is NOT fit for purpose

There are 7.6 billion people living on this planet and no two share the same story. In our lives we are all able to take a different journey, see different sights and think in different ways. This level of variety and individuality is something that humanity is gifted with. It creates our society. It lets us grow, create, learn, share and inspire.

This means there are 7.6 billion stories that can be shared. 7.6 billion different pasts being walked upon. This is society. This is natural. This is what enables us to create a brighter future. So why is it with all this variety could be celebrated, we are all pushed along a path, the same path, a path where we are taught that instead of having 7.6 billion different ways to respond, there is one answer, which is either A, B, C or D.

We are constantly being told to  “Think outside the box.”

If this is so important, then why is it we spend most of, if not all, of our childhood being told to fill out only the inside of one of four boxes.

It starts in kindergarten as we color in when we are told to stay inside the line. This concept of finding the answer is the main goal of the public school system. And this used to be okay. We used to live in a world with a simple paradigm, a simple concept.

Go to school, work hard, do well, go to university, get a job and gain some level of success and security.

This simplified linear path is no longer the case and no longer believed by students. The problem that this brings with it is motivation is lost in the eyes of the student. The education system was never designed to inspire the longing for education. It was created to inspire success and now that we live in the environment where this success is harder to achieve, we have a lack of motivated learners. This has to change. A job is no longer defined by a degree, so why learn? Schools should be an environment that celebrate all types of learning and that encourage students to learn in their way.

Not only this, but a teacher should be recognized as one of the most influential roles in this environment. They have the ability to sculpt the minds of these children into our future doctors, lawyers, and presidents. They have the ability to inspire students, making them ask, “Why?” instead of forcing such questions upon them. A teacher should be able to facilitate for all learning styles, as it is these styles of learning that will increase the boundaries of how we perceive the world.

A good teacher will reach the minds of students, but a great teacher can touch a heart.

A great teacher is able to find the genius in everyone. “Everyone is a genius, but if we judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life feeling it’s stupid.” This is a quote from Albert Einstein, a genius in his own right and he is correct. We live in a world that is turning into a fishbowl and we are beginning to drown in questions that we can’t answer. This is because we are teaching the fish, the people capable of seeing the problems in a different light, to fit into our idea of what is normal.

Why? Walk down the path when there’s a river that can take these fish to greatness? Variety and different ways of thinking are our most useful tool. We have the power as a race to look at things from different perspectives. Why are we cutting off the fins of our creative thinkers and forcing them to walk along a path where they’re struggling to breathe. They are losing their maximum learning capacity and more importantly, losing their creativity.

Don’t take my word for it. There was a book released in 1992 called Break Point and Beyond, and inside this book is a test you can take that determines whether or not you are classified as a divergent thinking genius. Of the 1,600 students, children aged between three and five who were tested, 98% showed they could think in divergent or creative ways by the time they were aged eight to ten, 32% could think this way. When the same test was applied to thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds, only 10% could think this way. And when the test was used with 200,000, twenty-five-year-olds, only 2% were classified as divergent thinking geniuses.

We’ve created a system that kills creativity. Ask a sixth grader to draw a bird. They will draw a lower case m, do it in kindergarten and you’ll get 300 drawings that may look completely different, full of that sought after color and creativity.

Imagine a world where instead of being pushed through a bottleneck, we push the boundaries of human knowledge. Instead of feeling stupid, we feel we have the power to change the world through inspiration and the variety we bring. Instead of climbing up a mountain, we swim down a stream.

School is a factory, a world where we’re all forced to sit in lines, put our hands up to speak, listen to a ringing bells and get a small 20 to 40 minute breaks. We don’t learn because we want to learn. We learn because we have to. We specialize education into different sectors of faculties. We still pump out graduates in batches, which we call year groups, and we grade our students with letters and numbers.

This obsession with statistics, grades and quantifying one’s knowledge is so obscure. Where else do we do this? Do we quantify love? Do we quantify sorrow? What number of letter represents your first kiss? How about your first heartbreak? What aspect of humanity is honestly, quantifiable? Sure, he may be bad at writing an essay on World War Two, but he may be able to tell a story that conveys an understanding of the hardships and despair that could put any essay to shame. We give letters and grades of quality to things like produce to the quality of meat, not the contents of one’s mind. We lock these creative thinkers in a box, where in the worst case, creativity is constricted until they are removed from the colors of creativity and met with the shades of grey.

Instead of having a set of keys to unlock their true potential, they have one key that opens the box and throws them into a world where they are taught to believe they are stupid, where they are the piece that doesn’t fit and have to change themselves to do so. If given the opportunity, schools can become an environment where all the avenues of education can be explored, when we can step off the forced path and find our own way, allowing new pathways to be followed. This is the only way we can move towards the future because here is a statistic that matters.

There are 1.9 billion children in the world and that is 27% of the world population, but they are 100% of the future.

Lachie is not alone in asking the question if our education system is fit for purpose

Why change the ATAR? The way we recognise learning contributes to the problem

How we recognise learning at the end of secondary schooling is important because it determines post school pathways to further learning and work and has a flow on effect into what we teach (curriculum) and what and how we assess young people at school.

The ATAR is the dominant representation of success in schooling. It was designed in an era where only 11% of the population attended higher education, and then most were from higher socio-economic groups.

Today, only 26% of university entrants actually use an ATAR to pursue further learning. It is not utilised in any other post school pathway.

In spite of this narrow utilisation, the ATAR has a disproportionate impact on secondary schooling curriculum and assessment.  Our school system is geared to ATAR outcomes even if these are not sufficient indicators of a young person’s potential for recruiters and employers. Source 

 

 

Teaching young people how to thrive in a green jobs future

Tim Minchin is right – its very hard to get people to change their behaviour

but then not everyone has met Josh Farr of Campus Consultancy and World renowned Changeologist Les Robinson

Les has made an artform out of making behaviour change simple and he is showing teachers involved in the Action4Agriculture Young Environmental Champions program how to support their students to become behaviour change specialists.

Josh Farr from Campus Consultancy is showing the students all the skills sets they need to use their behavior change skills to thrive in a green jobs future

 

Country shows providing a vehicle for young people to lead

Thanks to Ryan McParland and his TAG team members I am getting an inside seat of behind the scenes at our local country shows

This week it was Robertson Show where I was fascinated by the ring announcers and the variety of ways that locals could test their fitness

It was a very hot day but this didn’t seem to dampen the community spirit nor the punters with the Famous Robertson Show’s Australian Championship Potato Race the highlight

Two women and 29 men lined up to tackle the Famous Robertson Show’s Australian Championship Potato Race under the beating sun. Matty Hammond from Robertson ran a strong race snatching first place followed by Max Mauger from Robertson in second place and Nigel Scannell from Bowral in third. Source

Then there was the harness races where people replaced horses in front of the sulky

The exhibits in the pavilion where stunning

and once again the Rural Ambassador program was a huge success with Angela Hughes declared the winner. Photo source  

Congratulations Ryan you are creating a movement of young people who are role models for youth volunteering

#youthinag #creatingabetterworldtogether

Finding your niche – the sweet spot

We are all born with the capacity to do things we are naturally good at

In today’s world you need a lot of skills sets I didn’t get a chance to hone in the first 45 years of my life

You are only as good as the people you surround yourself. When I came back to the farm I discovered I wasn’t very good at milking cows and that was OK because we had plenty of people who were.

When I started a charity, I didn’t have a team of people and I had to learn a lot of stuff. Stuff I didn’t enjoy very much.

After 2o years of spending a great deal of time doing stuff that doesn’t come naturally, I am determined to spend the rest of my life doing the stuff that does.

Looking forward to finding that niche

Image source 

Your niche is that absolute sweet spot where what you are fabulous that overlaps with what you love doing, and it is something that other people value and will pay you for.

It is not a simple thing to define…and many professionals fall into the trap of doing what all the other professionals do, and doing it the way they do it, simply because it LOOKS successful and that is “how things are done”.  Too little thought is given to  defining what success is to us personally.  So we spend a lot of time making a living the way other people do, and believe that is “successful”. Source 

Young Environmental Champions – empowering young people to be change makers

In an ideal world we would all be active citizens in our communities . 

How do we set young people up to be active and resilient citizens in their communities?

This is a challenge put to the Action4Agriculture team last year, initially by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation (VFFF) and also by the Office for Regional Youth.

VFFF commissioned Environmental Leadership Australia and Foundation for Young Australians to understand the issues for young people and make recommendations on how they can best be supported. See research outcomes here

The Office for Regional Youth did similar 

Both organisations have youth advisory bodies and Action4Agriculture has youth representatives on both.

Action4Agriculture has been working with young people in primary, secondary and tertiary education for close to 20 years. We also have extensive insights into this demographic.

Building on our knowledge and insights plus that of our funding partners the Empowering Young Environmental Champions (YEC) program was born.  We are very grateful to insights of Professor Felicity Blackstock and Tanya Jackson Vaughan in developing the model

The YEC are identified young people completing their Australian primary, secondary and tertiary education, who are supported to act on environmental and social issues important to them, their schools and their communities.  Through the YEC project, these young people and their communities are connected with the best minds and ideas in government, education, industry, not for profits and the research sector to sustainably translate complex challenges into concrete problems and feel empowered to solve real world issues at a local, state or national level.

This bespoke program supports young Australians to be agents of change creating a movement to embed sustainability thinking and actions in our way of life.

The program is open to young people in Stage 3 to Stage 5 in primary and secondary schools and TAFE/Uni students  in the following regions in 2023.

You can see how it works here 

What’s involved here 

Support for teachers and students here 

Hierarchy of Intended Outcomes here

What I have learnt is success relies on bringing the right people to the table. I so wish everyone, everywhere had the mindset of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and fostered the communities of practice model  

We believe change can only happen when people work together, which is why partnerships with the broader community and organisations nationally are a cornerstone of BSL. Source

 

 

 

What does real leadership look like

Role models inspire, they motivate and they provide a benchmark you can aspire to achieve.

I have spent the last twenty years searching the agriculture sector for people who define REAL leadership for me.

Cathy McGowan AO is my benchmark and I was equally inspired when I saw 29 year old Ryan McParland in action. 

The leadership journey begins with knowing how to lead yourself, then to lead teams and finally to lead systems. I believe Ryan has the capacity to not only lead systems but to drive meaningful change within Australian agriculture. He has the skills to create a movement and also the skills to gather around him the role models, mentors, champions and funding partners that he needs to be successful,” Source  

At Action4Agriculture we have been supporting young people to go on the leadership journey. Our CULTIVATE program supports them to learn to lead themselves. Our Young Environmental Champions program supports them to lead others. Our Young Farming Champions Leadership Team Innovation Hub supports them to practice forms of leadership.

The world is crying out for more youth led organisations and more youth led projects. Our research has shown us a lot more consideration could be being given to how much a young person’s life can change between the ages of 12 to 30.

They transition from education to work, they fall in love, they make decisions about careers or children and whether they can have both.

This year our youth led leadership team trialed holacracy. The  person who put their hand up to be convenor suddenly found herself with a not to be missed opportunity to study in London and her PhD studies relocating her to Laos for 12 months. Life is full on when you are young

In talking to Ryan, one of my key interests in asking our wonderful journalist Mandy McKeesick to interview him and his “fan” club was the pivotal role his employer BlueScope is playing in nurturing his leadership journey.  If BlueScope see the wisdom in providing Ryan with flexibility, champions and funding through their Community Foundation partnership with WIN4 then surely they too are setting a workplace culture benchmark all organisations can aspire to have.

Watch this space – Ryan has started a conversation in our team and with other people and organisations who want to support young people to be part of the youth leadership  co-design process

 

 

 

Could empathy and compassionate curiosity be the silver bullet?

Today I am reposting a blog I did for Action4AgricultureChat to allow me to  also repost this wonderful post from The Ethics Centre “I’m sorry *if* I offended you”: How to apologise better in an emotionally avoidant world

I recently signed up for a workshop with Amy Gallo,  an international expert in dealing with difficult people

If we are honest with ourselves we can all be difficult to deal with if some-one touches the wrong buttons at the wrong time.

I manage a capability building program for young people who are “doers” and changemakers

I often find myself fielding calls asking for advice on how to handle people who are resistant to change

The first thing I say is “This is not my area of expertise”

Whilst I have done multiple workshops across the world with world class experts like Amy. Its one thing to learn the theory, its another to put into into practice, another to find safe spaces to practice it and the mega important one finding the role models in the Compassion Curiosity Framework space  that you can surround yourself with, learn from and channel when you need to

What my years of training has allowed me to do is identify the people who do it well and they make my heart sing

I saw an extraordinary example when I watched Series 12 Episode 2 of Call the Midwife recently

This 4 min video collates the scenes that I am referring to. Watch how Sister Julienne role models the Compassionate Curiosity Framework ( hear Kwame Christian talk about the framework here )

1. Acknowledging emotion

2. Getting curious with compassion

3. Engaging in joint problem solving

what an ideal time to extract this from Sarah Wilson The Ethics Centre post 

What *if* we offend or harm unintentionally?

I was presented with the above ethical quandary while writing this. Someone on social media commented that she’d wanted to approach me recently but felt she couldn’t because she had two kids in tow at the time. She figured I’d judge her for being a “procreator” given my climate activism work and anti-consumption stance. It was an unfortunate assumption. I had only last week written about how bringing population growth into the climate crisis blame-fest is wrong, ethically and factually (it’s not how many we are, it’s how we live). 

Of course, her self-conscious pain was real. But did I need to repent if I’d done nothing wrong, and certainly not intentionally (indeed, I’d not acted, in bad faith or otherwise). 

I decided there was still a very good opportunity to switch out an “if” for a “that”. I replied: “I’m sorry that you felt….”. And I was. I didn’t want her to have that impression of judgement from another, nor to feel so self-conscious. I was sorry in the broad sense of feeling bad for her. Feeling sorry can be a sense of tapping into a collective regret for the way things are, even if you are not directly responsible. 

The real opportunity here was to take on responsibility for healing any hurt, and to speed it up. If I’d listed out and justified why this person was mistaken (wrong) in feeling as she did, I’d have also missed an opportunity to be raw and open to the broader pain of the human condition. 

Doing good apology is essentially an act in correctly apportioning the tasks required to get the outcome that we are all after, which, for most adults, is growth, intimacy and expansion. Ruttenberg makes the point that some indigenous cultures work to this (more mature) style of repentance (as opposed to cheap grace), as well as various radical restorative justice movements. I note that the authors and elders who contributed to the Uluru Statement from the Heart often remind us that the document is an invitation to all Australians to grow into our next era.  

and to help us all do it better – the full post from The Ethics Centre

“I’m sorry *if* I offended you”: How to apologise better in an emotionally avoidant world

As we gear up for a referendum on a Voice to Parliament next year, I’ve been wondering if we need to have a better look at the way we say sorry.

We live in a highly binary and individualistic world that struggles to repent well. Yet we are increasingly aware of – and flummoxed by – bad faith efforts at the gesture.  

Witness the fallout from former Prime Minister Scott Morrisons’ baffling response speech to being censured last week in which he refused to apologise to the nation. I reckon we ache to do better; we want true healing. 

We could start with looking at the way we so often insist on whacking the Almighty Absolving Qualifier “if” when we issue an “I’m sorry”. I’m sorry if you’re offended/upset/angry. We go and plug one in where a perfectly good “that” would do a far better job.  

But an “if” negates any repentant intent. Actually, worse. It gaslights. It puts up for dispute whether the hurt or offence is actually being felt and whether it is legitimate. Attention switches to the victim’s authenticity and their right to feel injured. Did you actually get hurt? Hmmm…. 

Things get even more disconcerting when the quasi-apologiser thinks they have done something gallant with their qualified “I’m sorry”. And will gaslight you again if you pull them up on the flimsiness of it. What, so you can’t even accept an apology!  

I had a rich, senior businessmen do the if-sorry job on me recently. “I’m sorry if you’re angry,” he said in a really rather small human way. Rather than standing there miffed, I replied, “Great! Yep, you definitely fucked up. And so I’m definitely and rightly angry. Now that’s established, sure, I’ll take on that you’d like to repent.” 

I heard a well-known doctor on the radio the other morning very consciously (it seemed) drop the if from the equation when he had to apologise for making remarks about a minority group (in error) in a previous broadcast. “I’m sorry I said those things. I was wrong. I’m not going to justify myself. There are no excuses. I was in the wrong,” he said. It was a good, textbook apology and he probably wouldn’t land in trouble for it. 

But, and it immediately begs, is that the point of an apology? 

For the wrongdoer to stay out of trouble? For them to neatly right a wrong by going through a small moment of awkward, vulnerable exposure? 

What about the victim? Where do they sit in apologies?

I recall listening to a radio discussion where all this was dissected. The point that grabbed me at the time was this: In our culture, the responsibility of ensuring that an apology is effective in bringing closure to a conflict mostly rests on the victim, the person being apologised to. No matter the calibre of the apology, it’s up to the person who has been wronged to be all “that’s ok, we’re sweet” about things. They are effectively responsible for making the perpetrator feel OK in their awkward vulnerable moment. (And to keep the pain shortlived.) 

And so a successful apology rests in the victim’s readiness to forgive. 

Which is all the wrong way around. At an individual-to-individual level it’s cheap grace. The wrongdoer gets absolved with so little accountability involved. 

At a macro level, say with injuries like racism or sexism, we can see the setup is about a minority class forgiving, or bowing once again, to the powerful. 

I managed to find the expert who’d led the discussion –  Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, a New York-based Rabbi and scholar who’s written a book on the matter, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, a title that says it all, right? 

Ruttenberg argues we are doing apologies inadequately and in a way that fails to repair the damage done precisely because we privilege forgiveness over repentance. 

So how to apologise like you mean it

Drawing on the 12th Century philosopher Maimonides, Ruttenberg sets out five steps to a proper apology. 

1. Confession

The wrongdoer fully owns that they did something wrong. There’s to be no blabbing of great intentions, or how “circumstances” conspired; no “if” qualifiers. You did harm, own it! Ideally, she says, the confession is done publicly.

2. Start to Change

Next, you the work to educate yourself, get therapy etc. Like, demonstrate you’re in the process of shifting your ways. You’re talk and trousers! 

3. Make amends

But do so with the victim’s needs in mind. What would make them feel like some kind of repair was happening? Cash? Donate to a charity they care about? 

4. OK, now we get to the apology!

The point of having the apology sitting right down at Step 4 is so that by the time the words “I’m sorry” are uttered, we, as the perpetrator, are engaged and own things. The responsibility is firmly with us, not the victim. By this late stage in the repenting process we are alive to how the victim felt and genuinely want them to feel seen. It’s not a ticking of a box kinda thing. Plus, we’ve taken the responsibility for bringing about closure, or healing, out of the victim’s hands. 

 5. Don’t do it again

OK, so this is a critical final step. But there’s a much better chance the injury won’t be repeated if the person who did the harm has complete the preceding four steps, according to Ruttenberg and Maimonides. 

Does forgiveness have to happen?

I went and read some related essays by Rabbi Ruttenberg just now. The other point that she makes is that whether or not the victim forgives the perpetrator is moot. When you apologise like you mean it (as per the five steps), I guestimate that 90 per cent of the healing required for closure has been done by the perpetrator. And it happens regardless of whether the harmed party forgives, because the harm-doer sat in the issue and committed to change. The spiritual or emotional or psychological shift has already occurred. 

I should think that, looking at it from a victim-centric perspective, this opened space allows the harmed party to feel more comfortable to forgive, should they choose to.

It’s a win-win, regardless of whether the aggrieved waves the forgiveness stick. 

(The Rabbi notes that in Judaism, as opposed to Christianity, there is no compulsion for the harmed party to forgive.) 

 

21st century workplaces – Labour shortages, silo thinking, competition for the same talent pool – identifying the elephant in the room

Photo credit 

“If you believe in your heart that you need to do something, and you know in your heart it’s right… and especially when you’re in a position to make the change, you can’t back away from it,” Alison Mirams 

As reported in the Stock and Land “Dairy Australia has launched a national marketing campaign to attract new workers to the industry, after a survey found 25 per cent of farmers were unable to find labour or access workers with the required skills.

The survey found 22pc cent of farmers were unable to fill vacant positions, within three months, and 40pc had lost one, or more staff, in the 12 months prior to the survey.

You can see part of the campaign here

I truly hope it is successful and I would be very interested to see how Dairy Australia plan to monitor and evaluate its success. What ROI are they predicting?

I am sceptical as my experience agrees with Dr Nicole McDonald and her team and their excellent research that helps address the elephant in the room  “Career development and agriculture: we don’t need a marketing campaign”

Yesterday I attended a construction industry event. The key note was Alison Mirams ( awesome speaker, highly recommend)  Agriculture got a mention as an industry like construction not as ready to embrace 21st century challenges as it could be 

The conversations were interesting. Despite the keynote being a woman and the industry recognising attracting and retaining women could help address its workforce shortage ( 12.7% of construction industries people are women – same as 35 years ago) the sponsor representative used predominantly male language – “the guys in hi vis” the “blokes in the offices”

The Australian construction industry is in crisis. There are some startling stats beyond escalating costs of production ( I discovered the construction industry talks about REO costs like agriculture talks about fertiliser costs)

Stats like 1550 insolvencies and high rates of suicide (190 ppl)  per annum are heartbreaking. Young construction workers are ten times more likely to die by suicide than die from a workplace accident on a construction site.

Alison is on a mission to change the Culture Standard and is the chief crusader for the industry to have a 5 day working week.- Project 5 –  A weekend for every worker  Her message is “People are our Greatest Resource”. When we look  after the health and wellbeing of our people they will be more productive and she is working with the University of NSW to measure this. It hasn’t been easy with 75 rain days between Jan and July seeing a 54% productivity drop.

Getting back to the dairy industry and agriculture in general, my personal experience and 20 years of working with young people in the sector and in schools has shown me people want rewarding jobs where they feel the work they do makes a difference and they are valued for their contribution. In a world where young people’s career choices are more and more driven by their values  I think Alison Mirams has got it right.  We need to start with the elephant in the room – if you are going to employ people then firstly you need to be prepared to gain the 21st century skills that will earn your business top marks for “GREAT PLACE TO WORK”

We need to understand what drives people to make the career decisions they make.

Before we start spending mega bucks on marketing campaigns lets all ensure our industries are them image we want the world to see

We need to show we care.

In reality lets be honest the first stage ( not the last stage) would be upskilling employers ( see Dairy Australia stage process below )

It doesn’t matter what industry we are currently in there is a scarcity of labour in an overemployed market and I was heartened yesterday by the number of times the panel mentioned the power of collaboration

“If you believe in your heart that you need to do something, and you know in your heart it’s right… and especially when you’re in a position to make the change, you can’t back away from it,” Alison Mirams

Extract of article from Stock and Land 

DA regional services general manager Verity Ingham said the issue had been compounded by COVID-19 and the nationwide skills shortage, across a range of sectors beyond agriculture.

The campaign would promote the benefits of working in dairy farming and encourage Australians to explore a job in dairy.

Featuring dairy ambassador Jonathan Brown and seven dairy farmers, the campaign showcases why working in dairy matters, highlighting factors that have been shown to motivate people to consider a job in dairy.

“Competition for jobseekers in regional areas is fierce, so finding good, reliable people is a priority for dairy farmers,” Ms Ingham said.

“Keeping them is just as important.

Ms Ingham said coronavirus had an impact on both international and cross-border workers.

“Because there is such a range of jobs on dairy farms, closing international and state borders really stopped that flow of employees across the nation,” she said.

“Dairies are traditionally a place for that backpacker market and it burst quite quickly.”

DA looked to local markets but found many potential workers didn’t know what was required on farms.

Ms Ingham said the advertising campaign was the first step in a four-pronged approach to attracting, and retaining, workers.

“We’re going out into regional areas looking for non-traditional workers in the dairy industry, so not necessarily poaching from the beef or sheep farm, next door,” she said.

This would be followed by career education about dairy for school, university and TAFE students.

“The third and fourth parts are around supporting our farmers, connecting them with job agencies and places where there are job seekers,” she said.

“We’ll also be skilling the job agencies, so they know about dairy, and then connecting our farmers into those networks.”

The last stage would be skilling farmers in how to employ new staff

“It’s a little bit like becoming a cafe owner – you don’t necessarily start the cafe with looking for staff, you do it because you love coffee and cake,” Ms Ingham said.

“Farmers are often getting into farming, or even succession, because they love the outdoors, putting food on the table for the nation and animals – not necessarily to employ people.”.

DA was also setting up a pre-employment program, she said.

“We are working with those job agencies and networks, in terms of making sure that anybody who hasn’t been on a farm, or who has very little experience on farms, gets those really core skills,” she said.

“Once they land on dairy farms, they have got some of those basic skills, in terms of a skill set they need.”

How does the dairy industry learn from Kodak Moments

I have recently had the opportunity to invite residents in our local community to co-design the future we want to be part of and pathways to get there

As our local garbage trucks reinforce our community values the rural  amenity our dairy cows cultivate

BUT  the world is changing and cellular Agriculture is very real .

This is very good advice

.. the traditional dairy sector must recognise it’s on the cusp of pivotal change. In the face of multiple threats, it should maximise the social benefits of both animal-based dairy and minimise its contribution to climate change. Milena Bojovic  PhD Candidate at Macquarie University.

What does the future hold for our rural amenity and the role the cows play in it?

#CreatingaBetterWorldTogether #KodakMoments

Long footnote

Learning from the Past –  The last Kodak Moment 

Extract from article from The Economist

By 1976 Kodak accounted for 90% of film and 85% of camera sales in America. Until the 1990s it was regularly rated one of the world’s five most valuable brands.

Then came digital photography to replace film, and smartphones to replace cameras. Kodak’s revenues peaked at nearly $16 billion in 1996 and its profits at $2.5 billion in 1999. The consensus forecast by analysts is that its revenues in 2011 were $6.2 billion. It recently reported a third-quarter loss of $222m, the ninth quarterly loss in three years. In 1988, Kodak employed over 145,000 workers worldwide; at the last count, barely one-tenth as many. Its share price has fallen by nearly 90% in the past year (see chart).

For weeks, rumours have swirled around Rochester, the company town that Kodak still dominates, that unless the firm quickly sells its portfolio of intellectual property, it will go bust. Two announcements on January 10th—that it is restructuring into two business units and suing Apple and HTC over various alleged patent infringements—gave hope to optimists. But the restructuring could be in preparation for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

While Kodak suffers, its long-time rival Fujifilm is doing rather well. The two firms have much in common. Both enjoyed lucrative near-monopolies of their home markets: Kodak selling film in America, Fujifilm in Japan. A good deal of the trade friction during the 1990s between America and Japan sprang from Kodak’s desire to keep cheap Japanese film off its patch.

Both firms saw their traditional business rendered obsolete. But whereas Kodak has so far failed to adapt adequately, Fujifilm has transformed itself into a solidly profitable business, with a market capitalisation, even after a rough year, of some $12.6 billion to Kodak’s $220m. Why did these two firms fare so differently?

Fujifilm, too, saw omens of digital doom as early as the 1980s. It developed a three-pronged strategy: to squeeze as much money out of the film business as possible, to prepare for the switch to digital and to develop new business lines.

Both firms realised that digital photography itself would not be very profitable. “Wise businesspeople concluded that it was best not to hurry to switch from making 70 cents on the dollar on film to maybe five cents at most in digital,” says Mr Matteson. But both firms had to adapt; Kodak was slower.

A culture of complacency

Its culture did not help. Despite its strengths—hefty investment in research, a rigorous approach to manufacturing and good relations with its local community—Kodak had become a complacent monopolist. Fujifilm exposed this weakness by bagging the sponsorship of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles while Kodak dithered. The publicity helped Fujifilm’s far cheaper film invade Kodak’s home market.

Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, who has advised the firm. Working in a one-company town did not help, either. Kodak’s bosses in Rochester seldom heard much criticism of the firm, she says. Even when Kodak decided to diversify, it took years to make its first acquisition. It created a widely admired venture-capital arm, but never made big enough bets to create breakthroughs, says Ms Kanter.

Bad luck played a role, too. Kodak thought that the thousands of chemicals its researchers had created for use in film might instead be turned into drugs. But its pharmaceutical operations fizzled, and were sold in the 1990s.

Fujifilm diversified more successfully. Film is a bit like skin: both contain collagen. Just as photos fade because of oxidation, cosmetics firms would like you to think that skin is preserved with anti-oxidants. In Fujifilm’s library of 200,000 chemical compounds, some 4,000 are related to anti-oxidants. So the company launched a line of cosmetics, called Astalift, which is sold in Asia and is being launched in Europe this year.

Fujifilm also sought new outlets for its expertise in film: for example, making optical films for LCD flat-panel screens. It has invested $4 billion in the business since 2000. And this has paid off. In one sort of film, to expand the LCD viewing angle, Fujifilm enjoys a 100% market share.

George Fisher, who served as Kodak’s boss from 1993 until 1999, decided that its expertise lay not in chemicals but in imaging. He cranked out digital cameras and offered customers the ability to post and share pictures online.

Kodak also failed to read emerging markets correctly. It hoped that the new Chinese middle class would buy lots of film. They did for a short while, but then decided that digital cameras were cooler. Many leap-frogged from no camera straight to a digital one.

Kodak’s leadership has been inconsistent. Its strategy changed with each of several new chief executives. The latest, Antonio Perez, who took charge in 2005, has focused on turning the firm into a powerhouse of digital printing (something he learnt about at his old firm, Hewlett-Packard, and which Kodak still insists will save it). He has also tried to make money from the firm’s huge portfolio of intellectual property—hence the lawsuit against Apple.

At Fujifilm, too, technological change sparked an internal power struggle. At first the men in the consumer-film business, who refused to see the looming crisis, prevailed. But the eventual winner was Shigetaka Komori, who chided them as “lazy” and “irresponsible” for not preparing better for the digital onslaught. Named boss incrementally between 2000 and 2003, he quickly set about overhauling the firm.

Mount Fujifilm

He has spent around $9 billion on 40 companies since 2000. He slashed costs and jobs. In one 18-month stretch, he booked more than ¥250 billion ($3.3 billion) in restructuring costs for depreciation and to shed superfluous distributors, development labs, managers and researchers. “It was a painful experience,” says Mr Komori. “But to see the situation as it was, nobody could survive. So we had to reconstruct the business model.”

This sort of pre-emptive action, even softened with generous payouts, is hardly typical of corporate Japan. Few Japanese managers are prepared to act fast, make big cuts and go on a big acquisition spree, observes Kenichi Ohmae, the father of Japanese management consulting.

For Mr Komori, it meant unwinding the work of his predecessor, who had handpicked him for the job—a big taboo in Japan. Still, Mr Ohmae reckons that Japan Inc’s long-term culture, which involves little shareholder pressure for short-term performance and tolerates huge cash holdings, made it easier for Fujifilm to pursue Mr Komori’s vision. American shareholders might not have been so patient. Surprisingly, Kodak acted like a stereotypical change-resistant Japanese firm, while Fujifilm acted like a flexible American one.

Mr Komori says he feels “regret and emotion” about the plight of his “respected competitor”. Yet he hints that Kodak was complacent, even when its troubles were obvious. The firm was so confident about its marketing and brand that it tried to take the easy way out, says Mr Komori.

In the 2000s it tried to buy ready-made businesses, instead of taking the time and expense to develop technologies in-house. And it failed to diversify enough, says Mr Komori: “Kodak aimed to be a digital company, but that is a small business and not enough to support a big company.”

Perhaps the challenge was simply too great. “It is a very hard problem. I’ve not seen any other firm that had such a massive gulf to get across,” says Clay Christensen, author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, an influential business book. “It was such a fundamentally different technology that came in, so there was no way to use the old technology to meet the challenge.”

Kodak’s blunder was not like the time when Digital Equipment Corporation, an American computer-maker, failed to spot the significance of personal computers because its managers were dozing in their comfy chairs. It was more like “seeing a tsunami coming and there’s nothing you can do about it,” says Mr Christensen.

Dominant firms in other industries have been killed by smaller shocks, he points out. Of the 316 department-store chains of a few decades ago, only Dayton Hudson has adapted well to the modern world, and only because it started an entirely new business, Target. And that is what creative destruction can do to a business that has changed only gradually—the shops of today would not look alien to time-travellers from 50 years ago, even if their supply chains have changed beyond recognition.

Could Kodak have avoided its current misfortunes? Some say it could have become the equivalent of “Intel Inside” for the smartphone camera—a brand that consumers trust. But Canon and Sony were better placed to achieve that, given their superior intellectual property, and neither has succeeded in doing so.

Unlike people, companies can in theory live for ever. But most die young, because the corporate world, unlike society at large, is a fight to the death. Fujifilm has mastered new tactics and survived. Film went from 60% of its profits in 2000 to basically nothing, yet it found new sources of revenue. Kodak, along with many a great company before it, appears simply to have run its course. After 132 years it is poised, like an old photo, to fade away.