The BCA and yesterday's leaders

The BCA and its Plan for us

Much is being made by the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and the business media of the BCA's recent polemic against Australian 'governments', their “Action Plan forEnduring Prosperity”. The Plan has a lot of good content, particularly Part 5: Measuring Success which has a very good 'balanced scorecard' that includes indicators in three categories:

1. economic and material prosperity
2. social progress and liveability
3. sustainability.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the plan is a list of 'to dos' for the federal and state governments, mainly the federal government. Here perhaps a bit of politicking comes in – indirect criticism of the current Labor government and instruction to the (likely) incoming LNP government (despite the BCA's professed political neutrality one can see that the plan is consistent with the views of the conservative side of politics).

Yesterday's men

The biggest, and the fundamental, problem with the plan is its central thesis that what's good for business is good for the nation. This thinking is fifty years behind the times – how can these CEOs consider themselves to be community 'leaders' when their 'followers' have passed them by?

For example, the plan has over 100 mentions of “environment”. More than half of these refer to the “business environment” or similar. The others are predominantly related to environmental regulations and approvals that the BCA wants to be more business-friendly. Only one, referring to the energy sector, relates to business responsibility for environmental sustainability.

The plan is full of what the government should be doing, but little to nothing about what business is and should be doing. One can deduce that the BCA and its members feel that they are doing a cracking job and its only terrible government that is holding them back from achieving their true potential.

Self-delusion

The BCA really wants to be seen as a leading organisation in the Australian community. However, it has succumbed to the self-delusion that it, and its members: know what is good for the country; have the authority to demand that what it wants done, be done; and that their views are correct.

Their success as business people has created tremendous self-belief, which is important in a leader. However, they have fallen into believing in their own omniscience, omnipotence and infallibility.