Business leaders look back on a tough year and ahead to what's in store in 2010.
How was the recession for you?
We've gone through difficult times and we've had challenges that we've had to overcome. I feel quite fortunate because Microsoft New Zealand is in a really strong place at the moment.
We have great retention in terms of people, we have had some
great local business results and we've managed to add some value for customers by finding ways for them to save money using technology.
What was the biggest lesson you'll take out of it?
Everyone is affected in some way, no matter how large or small you are. It forces you to change at a pace people are typically not used to.
I've been with the company for a fairly long time and you learn to deal with the ambiguity and change, but I think the scale of it has created a level of fatigue among employees.
So the lesson I take is really making sure when you see these things happening you spend as much time as you possibly can ensuring that your staff don't burn out.
Are we through the worst of it yet?
I think that New Zealand is quite fortunate in some ways in that we went into the challenges relatively early.
I think as a consequence we learnt lessons quicker than other countries and we haven't seen as significant an impact as Europe and the United States.
We're also fortunate in that while we've had some challenges in our banking and finance sector we haven't had the same sort of the challenges in some of the other countries.
That said, we talk about something we refer to as the "new normal" inside our company and our chief executive of the global company refers to this as a fundamental re-set of the world economy.
The market is smaller, people will fight more for market share and I think if companies realise it they may actually act differently to the way in which they act now.
What do you think is the thing most likely to trip up the recovery?
People will rush back and assume that there were particular things they were doing two years ago.
The way in which they sought to invest to get a very quick return and their expectations in terms of return on some of those investments may be disproportionate to the benefit that they're likely to realise.
Chris Liddell, Microsoft's former chief financial officer, talked about making sure people were preparing for the "new normal" post-recession.
Basically, companies need to be investing in the capability of the people that they have.
I've spoken to a number of managing directors and chief executives recently.
There is a distinct difference between those ones who are investing in the capability of their staff and those ones who aren't.
I think that the ones who are investing are the ones who are likely to see a good sustainable business return over time and the ones who aren't are probably likely to lose staff.
What will you be doing in 2025?
I'd hope that I'd be retired but if I tell my wife that she invariably laughs.
Part of that is that I love the work that I do, in some ways it's more a hobby than it is work.
I'm forever building up this "bucket list" of things that I want to be doing as I get through the rest of my life.
Someone told me recently that if you can tick off about two items from that list every year, over the course of your remaining lifetime you should be able to tick off about 50.
So I figure in the years before 2025 I might be able to tick off 30, including going to Base Camp at Everest and hiking through South America.
