Whether it was the ambiance of the surrounding vineyards, or the zen of kangaroos and joeys enjoying the sunshine while munching morning grass shoots, I have returned with a more peaceful and accepting view of the world.

It had been too long between real breaks.  Since finishing my Executive MBA in early December, I started a change management contract with a client which has kept me on the road almost constantly between Moranbah, Qld and Singleton, NSW.

In the last few weeks I had found myself more inclined to react rather than respond, and more prone to the negative impacts of frustration (a mainstay of change management).  It was pure happenstance that created the opportunity for a short break, yet I reflect that it was precisely what was needed if I am to give my best to the assignment.

Caught in the machinations of change I was blinded to my building stress.  A roadblock that I had removed kept reappearing, sometimes in a different guise, and the repeated removal process wore me down.  My heart was discouraged.  Others,  although enabled to, weren’t acting.  Processes which had been challenged and changed were reverting to prior position.  White-anting was winning out by eroding a shared vision.  And my ability to model the way was waning.

Today’s blog, long awaited by at least me and Geoff if not you too, is simply to remind each of us to check our own well-being regularly and make sure we do actually take some time out and away from the day-to-day for a while.  It refreshes our soul, our attitudes, our bodies and minds.

And if you’re going to take a break, make it at Blackwattle Retreat.

More on the interesting stories of change at another time.

The Proposal

The Chief Minister explained the rationale behind the move in a speech at a private screening of the documentary Habitat which was followed by an expert discussion panel:

As a first step to protect the interests of local Malaysians, the state government is proposing to increase the minimum limit for foreign purchases of all properties from the existing level of RM 500,000 to RM1 million with a higher limit of RM 2 million for landed properties only in Penang island and retaining the present RM 500,000 limit for Permanent Residents.

In 2010 and 2011 there were 774 and 890 property transactions involving foreigners. These transactions constitute only 2.98% and 2.26% respectively of the total number of transactions in Penang. However to protect the interests of locals to ensure that they enjoy priority for less expensive properties, this restriction will help to provide a level playing field since foreigners have the advantage of a higher currency.

The Penang state government stresses that we welcome foreign participation in our economy including our property market. The state government feels that foreign participation can be profitable to both Penangites and foreigners in the higher end market where they can add value by helping Penang to transform itself into an international and intelligent city.

We don’t know the full details of the proposal and have no access to the discussion that followed the Chief Minister’s speech. Nor are we aware whether this proposal will also apply to investment in property development, commercial property or property obtained within the MM2H scheme.

The proposal itself is interesting when faced with another comment during the Chief Minister’s speech:

Many of the urban challenges we face can only be resolved by changing the way we plan, build and manage our cities and urban areas.

The Traditional Approach

The solution the Chief Minister is proposing is an example of how we can get trapped in our thinking. Cities all over the world have been faced with issues of rising housing prices and many have reacted in the same way – protect the interests of the locals by putting barriers in the way of outsiders. Our thinking is limited by the focus on money, value and financial gain because we are attuned to thinking about the “property market” rather than property as part of our lives and central to the values of our community.

There is another common element among those cities where property protection has been implemented in this way – the moves have generally failed. The limits the Chief Minister is suggesting will have an impact on some investors, but not on institutional and professional investors – those investors whose primary concern is financial reward and who are only looking for good investments. They have little or no concern for property use or government policy, they can invest for long enough to wait for changes of governments and they do what has to be done to make money. Through their ownership of property they are also able to assert enormous influence to gain economic advantage, often to the detriment of urban planning.

For these investors, it is very strongly to their advantage to ensure property prices continually rise to the detriment of the local community. If they have to invest larger sums under the new rules, they will also want greater returns. Rising property prices and the search for greater investment returns are two major barriers to affordable housing. These investors often avoid foreign ownership rules by establishing corporate entities allowing even greater investment at the expense of local ownership.

Defining the Values

The approach the Chief Minister is suggesting is highly unlikely to lead to the results he is trying to achieve because the solutions are not driven by the values behind the goals. In this case, the Chief Minister would like more Malaysians to be able to buy into the local property market, particularly those at the lower end of the economic scale. Greater local property ownership will help to ensure a sustainable cultural foundation for Penang, create long-term improvements in the prosperity of individuals and families, and provide greater opportunities for economic development driven by Malaysians.

Penang has become attractive to foreign investors for many reasons, not the least of which is the state of the current property market and forecasts about the future. So the question being faced by the Chief Minister is how to attract the type of investors who share the values and goals of the State (and probably Federal) government.

A New Approach

The Chief Minister and advisers should think about leveraging foreign investment to achieve their local ownership aims. There are significant market instabilities around the world at the moment making investment uncertain. There is also an ageing population globally, and many of these people are looking at small, safe, diversified investments with stable returns. Smaller investors tend to invest in places and things that they know – it is likely that if the government was to look for small investors, many of them would have been to and know Penang and would be prepared to invest based on their experiences, not just as a financial investment.

Instead of encouraging big money investors, create a framework around foreign investment for local ownership. Encourage small investors who are not looking for huge returns. Allow them to buy individual properties, up to a maximum of approx RM500,000, on condition that they enter into an agreement with a qualified local family or individual to lease the property to them for 3 or 5 years. The rental is set at a return rate below normal residential rental rates, allowing the renting family to save money on rental. So in an area where rental rate of return is currently 7%, set the rental at 4% return.

At the end of the lease period, the renter would have the right to purchase the property. They have had the opportunity to save money for deposits during the rental period as a result of the reduced rent. If the renter doesn’t want to purchase the property, the owner must sell the property in the open market.

To add to the possibilities, because of the long-term nature of such a scheme the government could build a fund which would allow the renter to purchase at the original purchase price paid by the foreign investor, with a guaranteed return provided to the investor through the fund (perhaps excluded from capital gains tax to save additional money) to make up for the difference between the original purchase price and the current market value. This fund could also be used to provide return on capital improvements, encouraging maintenance and renovation of the property which would put the renters in an even more advantageous position when they are able to purchase the property. No payments would be needed from this fund until the first leases end and the amounts required over the years would be both predictable and controllable.

This scheme might produce lower returns for foreign investors, but they will be safe returns, highly appealing to those nearing retirement age. This is an ideal type of foreign investor for Penang and an ideal type of foreign property investment for Penangites. The original investment could potentially be an alternative or combined addition to the current bank deposit required by the MM2H scheme.

Potential Results

A scheme like this would take the current interest in foreign investment in Penang and leverage it into creating the future that the Chief Minister seemed to be aiming for in his speech, creating opportunities for local ownership. We know it is short on detail and there are undoubtedly practical problems with the solution, such as limiting the number of these types of purchases a single foreign investor could make.

There may well be other and better ways of improving the prospects of local land ownership in Penang using a values-based approach. We’d love to hear them and hope the Penang state government can develop great proposals.

The important thing is to change the way of thinking from traditional approaches that don’t work to innovative ways of achieving goals that delight the community.

It is the first time for quite a few years that I have gone through the world of organisations as entities v process, communication as transmission v meaning, and the various approaches relating to discourse, metaphor, cultural analysis, critical analysis and change management.

The more that I reflect on my experiences and these approaches, the more I am forced to agree with Peter Drucker’s very direct start to Management Challenges for the 21st Century (2002). He made it clear that leaders, managers, academics and researchers in the fields of organisations, management, communication and change need to challenge the very foundations and assumptions of their work.

For what it is worth, here are some of my own thoughts:

• The starting point is Anita Roddick’s fantastic observation in Business as Unusual (2000) that “we went searching for employees, but people turned up instead.”
• People gather together because it is natural. Long before “organisations” ever existed, people gathered in tribes, communities, villages and groups. Many of the theoretical approaches seem to ignore the extensive evidence that legislation, regulation and “scientific management” have tried to take this naturally occurring phenomenon and turn it into artificial attempts to manipulate individuals for one purpose or another.
• A fundamental aspect of leadership is that it is a human activity undertaken to benefit others.
• Leadership is a far more important concept than “management” or “organisation” for the success of any group put together for a purpose. This includes encouraging and creating the environment for leadership at all levels and establishing the values that have brought the group/s together.
• Too much of traditional management is undertaken to benefit ourselves instead of others, even if dressed up in the guise of “maximising shareholder value.”
• Speaking of which, Drucker, Roger Martin, Steve Denning and even, at a stretch, Jack Welch are right when they describe “maximising shareholder value” as the dumbest idea in the world, at least when it comes to describing the purpose of an organisation. It may not actually be the “dumbest” as I’ve read some pretty out there theories over the years, but it is certainly a poorly phrased and faulty approach to business to isolate shareholders as the only beneficiaries, especially to the exclusion of customers and clients.
• The value proposition for an organisation, central to organisational survival, is not about shareholders and maximising their value.
• Unfortunately, those who control the very foundations of our ability to do business, such as governments, financial institutions, insurance companies and stock exchanges among others, all gain great power and money through enforcing external frameworks that seem purpose-built to ensure the only way you can run an organisation is to maximise shareholder value.
• Many Asian cultures have long accepted a holistic approach to life, including business, that places leadership and organisations within external concepts and environments, created and shaped from the outside. At a fundamental level, before recorded history individuals gathered together as tribes often to create mutual protection from the next tribe along or to maximise the ability to harness scarce food resources. The major reason behind the creation of the tribe was this external influence.
• We have a lot to learn from Asian and other cultural approaches and it is time we did. The domination of North American thinking, sometimes combined with thinking from the UK, does not create an environment where diversity of thought can lead to significant innovation and success.
• Most particularly, the concept of the outside-in organisation, where customers/clients/members define the shared values that create the organisation is now a concept being defined by the western world, while in Asia it has been a standard operating procedure that has been diminished through western influence. This concept includes a lot more than great customer service.

There may be no “one right answer” but there have been too many poor and bad ideas because of:

• Our desire to make life easy for ourselves by dealing with the amorphous blob that is employees and management, instead of recognising that people make organisations, individually and not just collectively (just as we try and communicate through mass means because of the need for efficiency)
• Our failure to base businesses and organisations on defined sets of values shared by those who make up the organisation, external and internal
• The lack of focus on leadership at the heart of organisations, in favour of focus on command, control, structures and processes

So what do you think, are any of these concepts ringing alarm bells for you and do we need to follow the advice of Drucker to re-examine our assumptions and foundations?

Traditional management has advantages in some limited situations, but in terms of creating long-term sustainable success for the people making up organisations (including customers and employees), traditional management has many weaknesses which makes it subject to major upheavals, including the external economic environment, disruptive innovation and the incredible drain on the passion and enthusiasm of staff.

One of the influencers on our thoughts is Steve Denning and I recently attended a webinar with him and Peter Stevens – the topic was the implementation of radical management, an approach markedly different from traditional management. We have previously reviewed Steve’s book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management and suggest it is essential reading for anyone looking at leading in an organisation in the 21st century.

One of the points made by Steve was that the implementation of radical management required work to start at the same time across all of the foundations of an organisation. While the work in re-defining the goal and values of the organisation, changing the roles of managers, coordinating the work of teams and moving to cascading rivers of conversations may proceed at different speeds and in different ways, the changes need to be started in all of these areas at about the same time.

This was an interesting concept for me that I really hadn’t thought through after reading the book. There were a couple of examples in The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management of the introduction of these practices within a team in the organisation, and as a result I decided to adopt this approach in my own situation when the opportunity came up.

Steve’s point was that while the teams he referred to operated far in advance of other areas of the organisation in terms of radical management (and in terms of results), the work to create the foundations had already started, creating the environment for success.

In my own case, I deliberately decided to seek results before setting out to challenge two of the key foundations, values and coordination, for reasons of expedience more than anything else. Many will be particularly surprised at my decision to leave the definition of values aside given my history and writings. In my situation as GM of a member-based organisation, I felt the definition of those specific values will require major work from the members, driven by the Board. As a new GM, I didn’t believe I was in a position to ignite this process until I had built and developed trust with the Board.

Steve’s webinar has helped me re-examine my priorities and my methods for implementation.

Have you had a recent external check of your ideas and methods? Something as simple as a free webinar could make a huge difference to your success.

I have been strongly focused on what I need to learn about the organisation I am in and the people who make it up. I have been identifying the characteristics of these people, and trying to isolate the shared values that have created the organisation. I have been learning about their approaches to their own work and the work of the organisation. And I have spent a long time listening.

It has been brought to my attention in a few ways recently, that a missing element in what I have been doing is changing myself. In focusing on others, I have missed adapting to the new circumstances I find myself in as I take the next steps of my life.

Okay, so I’ve started swimming as regularly as I can, but I am still very much in “take away food” mode because of my lack of comfort in my surroundings and the time I am spending elsewhere, so that comes out as a nil-all draw (though in reality my ever-expanding waistline may be suggesting the result isn’t that positive!). And my hair is now cut exceptionally short.

But there are many things that we need to think about when we take on major changes in our lives. In my case, a couple of recent events have highlighted some changes I’ve missed.

I attended a meeting of a number of representatives of organisations similar to mine. These representatives are working on a project that is unified across our organisations. The meeting was immensely enjoyable to me, and I was surprised by the level of care and attention, the ability to consider and analyse the viewpoints expressed, and the ability to make appropriate decisions, even identifying when decisions should not be made.

It was only later that another participant pointed out to me that I was sitting in a room with a lot of very quick and intelligent people whose jobs entail the use of those abilities on a daily basis. The organisation I have become a part of has 600 members, all of whom work in extremely demanding areas of medical practice requiring extensive academic and clinical experience and qualifications. I work in an office with people who have a great deal of experience in their fields. Working predominately by myself the last couple of years, and prior to that in situations where much of the work was process orientated rather than creative, has left me ill-prepared to adapt my own actions and thought processes to this environment.

In addition, I have re-entered an academic environment, this time as a student rather than as a teacher. My first assignment came back last week and I recognised the feedback immediately … strong opinions without appropriate grounding, poor application of academic writing … words I have written myself to students over the years (well maybe not the second bit – I rarely taught those types of subjects). When I re-read my assignment, I was able to identify each of the gaps the marker highlighted. I had failed to change my thought processes to suit that environment also (for those interested, the mark was a credit, so not exactly high quality work).

There are many aspects to our evolutionary journey through our lives. We often see and expect development and change from those around us. Before we lead, we need to identify the gaps in our approaches and examine  our objectives, so we can make the required adjustments to create the environment for success.

And in Week 6 of your new role, an external internet hosting provider has a major crash that results in the loss of five months of critical business records, including membership, education and training databases, a formal register of the profession, communications and website updates, among other things.

When a crisis of this magnitude occurs, it can have dramatic impacts. In my case at ACPSEM, as well as the obvious work that had to be done to recover the business records, we were faced with a senior person who is only available part-time having to put all work on hold for two weeks, other staff members doing similarly while the remaining few picked up the usual work that had to be completed during this time, the employment of casual assistance, calls to members for assistance … and even the team that was already instituting radical management had to stop and spend inordinate time providing recovery information.

Then there are the questions that are being asked: Why weren’t we following the manual back-up procedure that had been designed and approved two years ago (and hadn’t been followed for about a year)? Why weren’t we getting any assistance from the service provider? What about projects A, B and C that are being delayed? What was I, as new General Manager, going to do about this and why didn’t I know procedures weren’t being followed?

I have identified another barrier to introducing radical management to an organisation. A crisis of this magnitude will have an impact on the way we lead, the way people react, the confidence and trust they feel, the workload that can be carried. In my last post, I mentioned that foundations had to be laid for radical management, but an incident like this tends to lead to retreat rather than additional evolution – it is unlikely that we will get quick approvals to change any policies!

On the other hand, the way that the problems were addressed were very much in the manner of radical management, because we didn’t have much choice. Each person knew their own area and used their own expertise with minimal management, lots of communication, task leadership,  lots of responsibility for completing work on time and with minimal supervision. They also utilised User Stories to identify missing information that they wouldn’t know about because they weren’t responsible for its production. I couldn’t help much, other than by taking standard tasks off their hands, because I don’t have the knowledge or expertise.

Unfortunately, many may view this as a reaction to an abnormal situation, reasonable in a crisis situation, but not the way to operate generally when rigid adherence to traditional management command and control may have prevented much of the damage.

One other impact – I found myself retreating into a traditional management style. When a staff member came to me with a proposal not connected to the crisis, I stopped listening and reacted with concerns about budgets and why such a plan was required. I started to question this proposal because I was still reacting to the crisis, instead of acknowledging the expertise of the staff member and trying to add value to their plan.

I raised this at the next stand-up meeting and put everyone on notice – I can retreat from my words, and my actions won’t always align with them – they should pull me up on it when it happens.

So, interesting times. The journey will continue. And there was one other impact … it kept me busy and away from writing posts for quite some time!

I have accepted the position of General Manager for the Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM). The College has been going through its own corporate growing pains over the last few years as they have moved from a fully voluntary membership organisation to a professional member-based College responsible for the standards and growth of their professions.

Those of you reading my blogs on this site (and elsewhere) will know that I am a fan of what Steve Denning has chosen to call Radical Management and I will be looking to introduce this way of working to ACPSEM. I hope to blog about my experiences as I go, as well as continuing some of my broader work on leadership, management, communication and corporate growing pains.

I was taken by the description to come out of the Stoos gathering, that:

organisations can become learning networks of individuals creating value and that the role of leaders should include the stewardship of the living rather than the management of the machine

This suits my own preferred style of leadership, and was part of the driving force behind The Leader’s Beacon. However, I have already found that there are going to be hurdles and pitfalls along the way.

I introduced the ACPSEM office team to the notion of radical management this week, and tried to do it in an interesting and exciting way, especially through the use of stories. While I used some springboard stories, I found myself moving into abstract details because I was trying to lead a quantum leap instead of allowing the process to emerge organically.

At the moment, we are lacking some of the foundations required to introduce radical management. However a new team was starting this week, providing the opportunity to demonstrate how the system could work with one team while the rest of us work on creating the foundations we need for our own work. I decided to introduce the whole team to the principles, not just the newcomers and this led to me providing too much abstract detail.

I am also new to the team. One of the principles Steve Denning has written about is the way that stories emerge from the team during discussions on radical management. I started this way, inviting stories from the team, but they were reluctant to commit themselves in front of a new General Manager. I haven’t had the time to build up trust or for them to experience that my actions meet my words.

I have also found myself being pushed to make decisions which will have an impact on how the office and College operates. If I make these decisions, I will interfere with the self-organisation of the teams. If I don’t make these decisions, I can be seen as a cause of delay or as indecisive. Either way, I could become a success barrier or passion bleeder.

Most of our members work in fields like oncology, radiation therapy, diagnostic imaging, nuclear medicine and biomedical engineering. These are all high risk fields, dealing with human health and treatments, where patients demand the highest and most rigid of standards. As a result, our members usually work in controlled environments and with very strict procedures and checks. This is vastly different to the world of radical management and these are the people who we are aiming to delight, and who make up the councils and committees guiding these professions in Australasia. It is not just acceptance within the office that will be difficult.

One thing that I have achieved so far – at least everybody I have spoken to understands that we are in the business of delighting our members, not just providing services or products. The concept of member delight has been embraced and already others are starting to use this language – which is a great starting point.

Helping existing teams and structures, as we have done on our consultancy, is relatively easy compared to joining an existing team with some set ways of working, especially when they have been going through difficult transitions over the last few years. This was a challenge I felt I had to accept, and I intend to see it through to the benefit of the members of ACPSEM.

Photo David Gallagher http://www.flickr.com/photos/anythreewords/4024345820/

I was recently introduced, via social media, to the Song of Ice and Fire book series by George RR Martin, starting with Game of Thrones. The first book was very good and I decided to get the rest of the series, as I do. Since the end of the first book, through thousands of pages and four new books, the action has hardly gone anywhere. Few of the characters have experienced a name day, but we’ve had glittering descriptions of characters filling chamber pots. Both issues are going to create a problem for the TV series – either the young child characters will be played by 25 year olds or by 15 different actors if they try to follow the books too closely!

The long, meandering action series with focus on minute details and hardly any big picture progress is becoming common in modern entertainment – see, for example, Lost! It seems that authors and writers are so focused on creating suspense, mystery and plot twists, they forget about telling the story. They are so concerned about establishing longevity for their series that they start crawling to their end-point – up until the moment when they suddenly have to dramatically leap to a poor end because the publishers/producers cancel the series.

The same happens in business. I recently jumped on a Virgin Australia flight, my favourite domestic airline in Australia. Part of Virgin’s unique selling proposition has always been its people. The staff clearly enjoy working for Virgin, aren’t afraid to have some fun at work and create an atmosphere of interaction with passengers. This used to include having some fun with the safety demonstration at the beginning of flights, until the Australian regulators cracked down on it.

This latest flight featured something different – the safety demonstration was led by a pre-recorded video. When part of your USP is interaction between people, surely you don’t diminish that interaction by using video, especially right at the beginning of a flight when the atmosphere is created.

We’ve written about QANTAS before, but it is clear, as they try to establish new airlines in Asia, they have become a caricature of a national carrier, to the point where they are only trying to exploit national carrier status for sales and have abdicated all other notions of responsibility or reputation associated with that status.

The Shaver Shop is currently offering Boxing Day sales discounts with a difference – you pay the full in-store price for your shaver and then fill out a  form, cut out a bar code and send it to the manufacturer for $100 cash back (or take it to the post office in another case). The cash back is then sent by cheque, so that you have to go to the bank to make a deposit as well. It is pretty clear that the manufacturers have found a way of offering discounts that a) provides them with the opportunity to create a database and start sending customers advertising directly b) creates the possibility that some people won’t be bothered claiming the discounts, through apathy, losing vital information, forgetting to send all of the right information or not being able to cash the cheque, and c) makes the customer work for the discount so they don’t have to work for the customer. When I suggested they sell me the shaver for $100 less and claim the cash back from the manufacturer, the Shaver Shop salesperson was distinctly unimpressed. Needless to say, there was no sale!

One of the books on Steve Denning’s Holiday reading list was listed on Amazon, but when I tried to buy it I couldn’t – far be it for Harvard to practise what it preaches in modern management and focusing on the customer. Harvard do a great job of putting barriers in customers’ paths so I couldn’t buy the book from Amazon. At times, we haven’t been able to read their blogs without constant pop-ups and blocks if you fail to register, or fail to register in precisely the right way.

You can see examples all around you (please feel free to give us your favourites). They interfere with your loyalty to a brand and with your customer experiences.

Don’t forget to continually test your actions against your values, strategy and people, both customers and staff. It is generally good to avoid becoming a caricature of yourself if your aim is to create long-term sustainable success.

Find a way to bring the spirit of celebration into your business throughout the year, and your business will become more enjoyable and prosperous.

In the meantime, merry Christmas, happy Chanukah and Selamat Menyambut Hari Krismas!

President Obama addressed the Australian parliament on Thursday:

I’d like to address the larger purpose of my visit to this region — our efforts to advance security, prosperity and human dignity across the Asia Pacific.

For the United States, this reflects a broader shift. After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region.

As President, I have, therefore, made a deliberate and strategic decision — as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with our allies and friends.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the East-West Centre on the eve of the APEC meeting on 10 November:

Now from the very beginning, the Obama Administration embraced the importance of the Asia Pacific region.  So many global trends point to Asia.  It’s home to nearly half the world’s population, it boasts several of the largest and fastest-growing economies and some of the world’s busiest ports and shipping lanes, and it also presents consequential challenges such as military build-ups, concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, natural disasters, and the world’s worst levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

It is becoming increasingly clear that in the 21^st century, the world’s strategic and economic centre of gravity will be the Asia Pacific, from the Indian subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas.  And one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decades will be to lock in a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise – in this region.

The opportunities being created in established, developing, opening and growing economies, including China, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and many others, is also going to be met with increasing competitive interest from the USA, Europe and the rest of the world.

There are some, such as Gerard Henderson of the Sydney Institute, who see little difference between these statements and the words and actions of predecessors. We would suggest there are major differences worth considering:

• These statements are driven by a different President with a very close connection to and understanding of the region, much more so than Bush, Clinton, Bush or other US Presidents in recent decades who have tended towards knowledge of and concern about Europe and the Middle East, for cultural, political and traditional reasons
• There is an emphasis on the strategic direction, openly emphasising the importance of the APAC region to the exclusion of other regions, not just viewing it as one of the growing global economies or as a region of great potential
• There is greater emphasis on the non-economic factors of the APAC relationships, including security and diplomatic relationships with non-traditional allies, placing the military or “police” role the US has traditionally claimed in a broader developmental context
• There’s a lot less mention of the need for APAC countries to adopt US values and more focus on fundamental values defined globally that contribute to regional prosperity and security, with potentially greater acceptance of some different political philosophies

Politically though, it is going to be difficult for President Obama to focus on this strategic agenda in the context of winning an election in a little under twelve months, given the current US economic situation. It is hard to see this broader, international agenda becoming a key focus of any other successful candidate in the short-term as they move to implement their key election policies, which are likely to be domestic or focused on current US international conflicts.

Regardless of any analysis, these expressions of support by key US figures should be seen as yet another vote of confidence for business and development in the Asia Pacific region.