It was a pleasure to welcome back Trent Duvall, National Leader - Consumer Products from KPMG Australia for a second year to discuss trends and review the performance of the retail market over the past year. Its no doubt an extremely challenging and complex time for retail leaders due to so much change, social media input, diversification and interruptions.

Key points:

Consumer sentiment showed an uplift since July 2015 but still remains volatile.

Hardware, gardening, clothing, recreational goods, Take away food, liquor all remain relatively strong. Department stores face the greatest challenges.

In the last 3 months recreational goods have had the strongest growth, whilst department stores are showing negative growth.

The grocery market will continue to grow but its competitive and the likes of Aldi are now moving into fresh foods so it will be interesting to see what happens in this space.

We shop 24/7 and are always connected. We need to tap into all the generations and provide a strong service directed and targeted to the way they work and live. It's a real shifting market, gone are the days of “going shopping”. 

The 5 trends consumers are drawn to are imperfection and authenticity, creativity, mindfulness, accessibility and convenience.

Innovation and technology are driving so much change and transformation. Many retailers are striving to provide a seamless experience across channels. He gave some good examples of UK companies that are achieving in this area.

Retailers are using analytics wisely and reacting to change immediately and pricing goods according to these changes.

Analytics can deliver customer data on buying habits, allowing staff to make smarter product recommendations.

There is always some interesting slides on the future look of supermarkets, retailers are embracing innovation, technology to create interactive and seamless shopping experiences. 

It will of much interest to see how the landscape changes over the next year.

Thank you to everyone who came along to this event, if you would like more information on upcoming events please head to our Events Page and join our community by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter and connect with us on LinkedIn to stay up to date.

Last month, Moir Group hosted Richard Grupetta, Partner for the Asia Practice at Grant Thornton Australia.  Richard addressed the very popular question many businesses are currently asking “How To Successfully Expand Into The Asia Region” and the steps you need to take to best ensure a positive result.

Richard addressed the reasons for the attraction to Asia and how the global economic “centre of gravity is “irresistibly” shifting to the Asian region. This dramatic acceleration of growth is predicted to continue well into the future seeing a significant decrease in business interest in Europe occurring at the same time.

Richard focussed predominantly on Japan, China, Korea, India and Indonesia with the most attention based on China as it is:-

• Australia’s largest export market

• Has a population of 1,368 million people

• GDP growth rate around 6.8%

• It is a transitioning market – growth in consumer, manufacturing and services markets

• Growing online business

• ChAFTA (China-Australia Free Trade Agreement)

• Growth in Food/Beverages, consumer goods and education sectors

Richard then explained his 5 step approach when approaching the Asian market.

1. The best fit approach – Are you Asia ready?? Define your product/service, who are your competitors etc

2. Market review and ‘What if’ development – what is the market? Research!

3. Best options to decision

4. Budgeting and preparing for success

5. Roadmap development

Moir Group is proud to present to you our next video in our new series "Corridor Catch Ups" 

The Vinnies CEO Sleepout is a unique way for business leaders to raise awareness and important funds in support of essential homeless services across the country. There are more than 100,000 Australians who find themselves homeless each night of the year. 

At Moir Group we are very proud to support the St Vincent de Paul Society, and after participating in the CEO sleepout since 2012, our CEO, Stephen Moir, will once again participate this year. Since the 2012 sleepout, Moir Group have partnered with St Vincent de Paul/Matthew Talbot Homeless Services and we are now running monthly resume and interview workshops giving advice to their clients. This commenced in September 2012 and we have been committed to running monthly workshops since which have resulted in numerous people securing employment. We are therefore asking you to consider making a donation to this very worthwhile cause. 

If you would like to donate then the link to Stephen's profile is  https://www.ceosleepout.org.au/ceos/?ceo_name=stephen+moir 

From Stephen and all the staff at Moir Group, thank you for your kind donation to this very worthwhile cause.

                       

“From Tax To The Boardroom”

What Prisons, Aged Care and Frozen Food Has Taught Me about How to Manage Your Career

Last month, we had the privilege to host Peta Bayman, Director Facilitating Results Pty Ltd, presenting on "Working With Unconscious Bias''. Peta talked about the diversity of a workforce and how we all have an “Unconscious Bias” towards many things in life whether it be at home, socially and/ or at work. Although we all may look at the same picture, how we interpret it is completely different and this taps into our unconscious thoughts, assumptions and opinions.

Incorrect assumptions can extend to groups resulting in:

This can been seen in the workplace upon our choices of hiring staff and can lead to a team of people all with the same background, appearance and views.

The question is "How can we change this?"

• Awareness – I am biased, its OK
• Questions – ask different ones – think about what assumptions I have made
• Perspective taking – how does this look from another, different set of shoes?
• Systems – start seeing the whole system, seeing the interconnections of things

It is human nature to like people like ourselves and seek opinions from those that we know have the same opinion as us. However, diversity creates opportunity and leads to change and a world or workforce of inclusion.

Moir Group recently hosted Dr Roger Collins who spoke for us on the very popular topic of leadership. Roger asked the very captive audience the question, “Leadership: Where Did We Lose Our Way & How To Get Back On Track”.

Roger discussed tightening our overall leadership terminology and discussed the 3 levels of leadership:

1. Self – this will become more important as individuals need to respond

2. Team/corporate/individual – The is a primary focus and the psychological aspect is very dominant in this field

3. Shared/collective – Roger spoke about the case study of McDonalds and the CEO Charlie Bell and his impact on a collective and a shared leadership approach, backed up by the core values within the McDonalds company

He advised us to consider moving away from a normative and idealized leadership, this is low narcissism with high humility as well as a level of spirituality and authenticity. Then moving to a descriptive approach, which is a much more task orientated and problem solving style, developing relationships, advocating change and always looking externally to network, and successfully and confidently represent your brand. Try not to think of leadership as a single causal factor. Ensure your organization is aligned with your culture, policies and practices with the outcomes that you expect of your leaders.

Overall Roger believes that most leadership behavior can be learnt and although leadership potential and aspiration can be identified early within individuals, your organizational culture plays a big role in the development of your future leaders. As well as this, the timing of their development is significant as results can be short term but development may be longer term. You need to have persistence and also patience in developing your leaders. Leadership is developed more effectively from actual experience rather than formal training and education, think of the 80:20 rule.

Overall, shift your emphasis away from formal development to strategy and issue related at work development with reflexivity. Build a community of strong leadership practice and also increase the robustness of the evaluation of your future leaders.

“Edison didn’t invent the light bulb by upgrading the candle” So whatever you are doing now probably needs a fundamental rethink and change.

Thank you to everyone who came along to this event, if you would like more information on upcoming events please head to our Events Page and join our community by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter and connect with us on LinkedIn to stay up to date.

The global and Australian economies are not as bad as they may seem, in fact they are in quite good shape. 

This was the summary from our first event of the year that David McDonald, CFA Chief Investment Strategist Australia, Private Banking and Wealth Management for Credit Suisse AG spoke at last week. For quite a number of years now David has spoken at this event for us, covering all the main economic hubs of the world and summarizing the US, China, Europe and Japan and then focusing on Australia. Each area has its own challenges, however these are manageable and in the main are being dealt with in a reasonable way. Australia continues the transition of its economy away from the resources sector. The oil price will return to more normal levels in time, it is mainly a case of over supply at present. Whilst China is not growing at the very high rates it has done in the past, it is still growing well and transitioning to a more services oriented economy. Australia will benefit in tourism and agriculture amongst other areas from this transition in China. The US has grown well in recent times and Europe continues its slow growth away from the GFC. Japan remains very sluggish.

Australia should see reasonably solid growth in 2016 and there is nothing on the horizon at this stage to knock it off course. 

All in all a much more positive outlook than many of us had thought going into the event. Always a nice way to start a new year, and David will be back again next year so we can see if his predictions were right!

By David McDonald

Chief Investment Strategist Australia, Private Banking & Wealth Management

CREDIT SUISSE AG

Financial markets have got off to a shaky start in 2016. Will the woes continue? Should we “sell everything” as some have suggested or are global fundamentals more positive than markets are implying?

The US Fed has begun to hike interest rates – will they continue and if so what are the implications? Is the European recovery still on track?

What is happening in China? Are financial market gyrations a sign of underlying problems?

And importantly what does this mean for Australia. Will the AUD fall to lower levels, are commodity prices ever going to recover?

David will discuss all of these issues and more in his presentation as well as providing a review of financial markets over the past year. Click here for more information on his presentation.

31 Not Out!”

Last month, Steve Rowe General Manager Human Capital gave us his perspective on 31 years at senior levels in HR. He discussed how the Human Resources function has developed over this time and the challenges and opportunities it faces going forward. Steve has worked both in Australia and the UK and across multi nationals and privately owned businesses as well as his own Consulting business. We also had a really interesting conversation across the room about where HR currently sits and its future. 

There were a number of key themes coming from the session.

• Change is everywhere and HR is and should be a key part in managing this change well
• There is lots to learn from the manufacturing sector, especially around processes
• Always put your hand up to take on new challenges
• HR professionals should be asking themselves what does success mean in their roles? What does it look like?
• When “you are in flow”, HR is the best job in the world”. When not, the opposite probably applies
• If yourself and the business are in flow, things can change very quickly
• In Japan, experienced and high profile people in a business are rotated into HR and this gives HR a very good profile in the business
• It is important to have a finance colleague with you i.e have business partners
• HR can and should be doing really good non finance reviews of the business
• Not all goals fit into a 12 month timeframe
• Don’t spend too much time on budgets, they often get in the way
• The people and cultural piece needs depth and rigour

Finally Steve talked about HR’s mission and he drew the diagram below.

In summary I took away that HR is a critical role in any business, however it is also being fundamentally challenged at present. My personal viewpoint is that it needs to attract outstanding leaders in numbers and that this will make a big difference.

Thank you to everyone who came along to this event, if you would like more information on upcoming events please head to our Events Page and join our community by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter and connect with us on LinkedIn to stay up to date.