By Lacey Filipich BEng(Hons) MAICD
In my professional past, I spent a lot of time flying into mining sites for a substantial fee to tell management teams two things:
- Your only targets should be Safety, Volume and Cost. The rest is window dressing.
- Stop doing most of what you’re doing. Just do a few things, do them properly, and be relentless in your de-prioritisation of the distracting crap.
The KPI targets and the contents of the not-to-do lists vary, but the concept is essentially the same everywhere. We have too many targets and too much to do, so we lose sight of the important stuff. It’s part of the human condition.
In my advice to their bosses, I add a third point: the management team bonuses should be delayed by two years. Why? Because they should not reap the rewards of meeting their targets until it can be shown that those results are sustainable and they did not cause long term damage by making poor decisions. Paying them in the same quarter or year as they achieve the targets means they have an incentive to rape and pillage with little thought to the future. It may not be the most significant incentive and it raises uncomfortable issues of trust and integrity, but it’s there.
So what the hell has that got to do with the Senate inquiry into the poor financial advice some of our biggest banks have been giving their clients? Read more
