Grow up

By Rebecca Macfie

Thursday 1st July 2004

I come from a family of businesspeople. My family may be surprised to see itself described this way, but it's true. In my immediate family there's a farmer and a retired farmer, a manufacturer, and a chief executive of a fairly big company. There are lots of businesspeople in my neighbourhood, too - the builder up the road, the chap who owns the local garage, the cleaning contractor who comes to wash my windows, and the guy over the road who's hoping to commercialise a very cool invention, to name just a few.

With the exception of one or two, most probably wouldn't describe themselves as businesspeople. Only one of them routinely wears a suit (the majority probably don't even own one). They might describe themselves as self-employed, or as owner/operators. They might simply think of themselves as hard-working battlers. But in fact they are businesspeople - every bit as much as Theresa Gattung or Ralph Norris.

Small business minister John Tamihere has also observed the phenomenon of small businesspeople who don't think of themselves as businesspeople. What's more, he reckons they're downright suspicious of "big" business. As he told Unlimited's deputy editor Fiona Rotherham when she interviewed him for her story on small business growth (page 48), "They look at the big end of town, fair dinkum, that's where they think business is. Small business resents big business because they don't think of themselves as business."

So how is it that the word "business" conjures up resentment and suspicion, and is so disconnected from the lives of most people that even those who are in business don't think of themselves that way?

I blame the media. Well, at least partly. When I joined the business section of a metropolitan daily back in the late 1980s we didn't write news about business, we wrote about the profit and loss announcements of companies listed on the stock exchange. On an exciting day there might be a takeover announcement or a receivership, but on the whole it was a pretty dry, humourless diet of news that we'd dish up each day. Our coverage was legitimate and accurate as far as it went, but it covered only a small sub-set of business.

When it comes to mainstream daily reporting of business news, not much has changed. It's still mostly sterile, boring stuff with an overwhelming bias towards listed companies. Seldom does your morning news bring you a sense of the passion and sacrifice involved in, for instance, getting a startup company on the road, or the rollercoaster thrill of managing triple-digit annual growth, or the sheer determination required to turn around a failing enterprise.

To the extent that the daily media shapes public perceptions, business is therefore a rather distant, abstract and emotionless endeavour, run by remote suit-clad people who often come across as aloof and arrogant. It's easy for people to feel mistrustful and disconnected from this caricature of big business - even when they work for it, or sell their goods or services to it.

In its recent survey of public attitudes, the Growth and Innovation Advisory Board (GIAB) also hit upon this ambivalence towards big business. Although many respondents saw business as a vehicle for wealth and personal satisfaction, and associated being in business with values like hard work, innovation and teamwork, big business was something else altogether. Big businesses were objects of suspicion, and there was a strong concern that they failed to "give back" to their communities.

Is it any wonder, then, that many small businesses have little desire to grow into big ones, as Rotherham points out? Growing a business requires commitment, discipline, hard work, and money. As many small business owners see it, doubling the size of their business is double the trouble. Why bother if you're going to be regarded with suspicion if you do make it big?

Yet lifting the growth of our small business sector is crucial to New Zealand's long term prosperity. Clearly, the growth challenge is complex and varied, ranging from lowering compliance costs to addressing skills shortages and lifting the competence of small business owner/managers. But the bigger challenge is to make big business something to aspire to, not something to be suspicious of.

The GIAB research suggests small business in New Zealand has an aura of honest endeavour, while big business is seen as base and self-interested. Both views are crass stereotypes. The reality is that many large businesses are led by generous visionaries, and many small businesses are badly run and deserve to fail. And vice versa.

Until New Zealanders learn to see business - large and small - as essentially creative and positive, recognise those who succeed at it, and hold those who do it incompetently or dishonestly to account, we can forget about our aspirations for the upper echelons of the OECD. It's worth remembering that next time you skip the business section of your morning newspaper and head straight for the action and excitement of the sports pages.

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Grow up

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