MSCNewsWire, Napier, 31 March 2016  -  The strength of New Zealand premier John Key’s hunch that there was a majority groundswell of approval for a national flag change has been vindicated. He could have successfully implemented his concept for the flag change had it not been for one single factor that was very much within his control.

His abysmal execution of his own flag change concept.

The flag episode represents a master class in any business management school anywhere of a powerful concept becoming subordinate to and wrecked by poor execution.

Basically we can see now that Mr Key fell in love with his own deal, the flag change concept. We can see that being so mesmerised he became blinded in the matter of its execution.

In management case studies concept versus execution is on a par with assumption versus fact.

Here are the flaws in Mr Key’s execution of his flag switch concept:-

    1.. His unqualified enthusiasm for the switch meant that he personally bundled himself into the referendum option on the flag change    2.. As a businessman he utterly failed to explain why the flag change was deemed to be necessary in the first place    3.. He utterly failed as a trader to explain in a comprehensible way why the public should pay for firstly the  referendum, and then the cost of the numerous processes involved in an actual change in terms of materials and everything else.

Had he not been so dazzled by his own concept he would have trimmed his execution thus:-

    1.. He would have distanced himself from his own concept, perhaps by leaving it, for public consumption anyway, to be baby-sat by his trusted lieutenant-cum-lightning rod Mr Stephen Joyce MP who would then have installed a populist style intermediate working committee. This would have routinely thrown off words such as democracy, change, diversity, multiculturalism ......    2.. His greatest mistake. He should have cited here the need for a flag that did not look quite so similar to the Australian flag. That New Zealand, if only for commercial reasons, now required its own global distinction, branding......    3.. As a bottom-liner Mr Key should have quantified the cost versus value of the flag change in terms of taxpayer benefit.The project served as a diversion, and one with an artistic flavour, for a considerable amount of time and as such may even be considered to have sweetened the life of the nation.

The picaresque episode serves in a macro context as an example of a powerful concept blinding its creator to the practical necessities of its execution.

At a micro level, and this is of particular relevance to New Zealand business and investment, it illustrates the constant and continuing problem when a strong and powerfully-placed personality gets a bee in their bonnet.

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