If I was ... for a day ... what would I do?

Specifically, if on Friday, I became the Minister for Small Business in Aotearoa, New Zealand what would I do on my first day??

I would take briefings (LOL, because that is what happens) and I would also set an agenda for the officials to work on and come back to me ‘quickly’, not next year.?

Recently I wrote about What is a fit for purpose small business policy for Government — you can read it here . In this piece I shared that a small business policy set should come from both 1%’ers and 20%+ — a mix of policies that target niches and more broadly if you are truly going to be the Minister for Small Business — when you have 540,000 small businesses in NZ you can’t solely target the 1%’ers, in exporting you can which is what NZTE does well (from what I see), but not in small business if you are being true to the label on your badge as Minister for Small Business — you can’t say you are Minister if your policies touch < 10% of your market each year??

So first thing, I would ask my officials to give me a summary of ‘all’ initiatives that represent and cover small business?, and I would ask for them to be separated between the 1% and 20% examples. I would also ask for data on the effectiveness, the take-up, the impact, and also the original basis or argument for Government putting in place the policy. From this data and reporting, I would want to learn ‘what’ is working and I truly would like to see some accountability independent of officials, independent of Ministers and stakeholders to whether there is an effective return coming for the tax payer from these policies.?

Second thing, I would like to understand ‘where’ the gaps exist for other initiatives that would make a difference and are justified. I would not solely ask my officials, because they are inherently biased (they are all good people) and I would also like to get input from small businesses themselves, recognising that it is the ‘inference’ that comes from what small businesses say that gives the opportunity for insight. I would also encourage the people in the various agencies that have high coverage of small business e.g. IRD, ACC to be super courageous in rethinking and redesigning the environment that could support and enable small business.?

Third thing, I would specifically take a couple policy initiatives over the last few years in small business, to see what we can learn as to what actually has happened as a result of the Government support and funding. I would call this ‘learning by doing’ rather than having the academic process for thing 1 and thing 2 above which tends to get tied up, slowed down and qualified.?

The Regional Business Partners Programme is a Government funded programme of R&D and Business Capability support for small businesses administered by RBP partners across New Zealand and managed by Callaghan and MBIE. Whether you consider the money is a big amount or not, what I would like to understand is how much money is going into the initiative including direct money to the small businesses, the funding to pay the RBP network and the admin costs for the agencies. I would also like to know how much coverage this gets ie how many small businesses per annum are supported and I would like to have a figure of $ per small business that this policy is supporting. I would also like to know that if we dropped this programme what would be an alternative to give better results or if the results were good, how we could scale this to get wider coverage. From what I knew from the data, coverage is aimed at around 6,000 small businesses per year — so I would question why that number, is it a good number, what else could we do??

The Digital Boost Programme is an initiative that was set up over the last few years, to support ‘digitisation’ of small businesses and providing content, inspiration and support to help small businesses make the move. It has done some pretty amazing numbers around engagement, with the Minister recently stating in a speech that 58,000 small businesses have engaged with Digital Boost. That is 10% coverage and arguably higher if you take a TAM/SAM/SOM approach to the small business market. This is big coverage and it creates real hope around what a policy set can be to achieve coverage. I would like to understand the diversity of the 58,000 and the size of businesses from startups to sole operators to small businesses. I would also like to understand ‘what has happened’ as a result of his learning and engagement e.g. how many of the 58,000 have gone on and implemented new digital tools and what the business impact has been, and how many haven’t and why. This group of small businesses provides a massive opportunity for longitudinal insights as to what is happening to them as a result of the education and whether this type of intervention is working and/or how it could be tweaked or improved. I can’t understate how important this data set is.?

Note, in both of these reviews I would not rely on my agencies to do the work or the providers — I would instead require an independent organisation to come in and do the review to get us some high quality, and independent qualitative and quantitive research insights about the policy outcomes and effectiveness and possibly some suggestions for the future. The good news on both of these programmes is that they are not ‘new’ the RBP is many years, and Digital Boost is into their 3rd year so they have some data. Importantly I am pretty sure that the Government has rights to access the data for the purpose of surveys which gives a great opportunity to get insights. What I would be looking for better and independent data about coverage, rational and logic checking of the original intervention compared to what has happened, accurate comparative data of costs for the policy including Central Government, Partners and on a firm basis, and it would be great to have some sort of view of the effectiveness and results of the policy. Don’t worry I am not talking about API access to the IRD from the database — that would only happen if I was the IRD Minister too LOL. I would also want to have some money spare to double down on those parts of the policy that were clearly showing promise and could do with more support.?

Two places to start, to flex the learning and muscle around accountability, impact and logic. Stand up if there are less than ideal outcomes or double down if there is promise.?

If I was also a little frivolous, I would probably issue a tender to the Finance Sector that specifically excluded the mainstream banks (not just Aussies, but probably extending to KiwiBank and maybe Heartland) to buy/transfer the Small Business Cashflow Loans that are administered by the IRD — as part of establishing the Small Business Bank of New Zealand, with some further matching funding from the Government to set up an actual, digital bank for small business. How many small businesses took up the loans, a lot, I can’t recall that it was something like 85,000 or 100,000 small businesses took up these loans. That is a pretty compelling coverage logic!

The good news is that this is going to be a series of thoughts of ‘If was I?…. for the day?….’ around New Zealand’s economic performance and what initiatives could be implemented to improve our productivity and performance. The even better news for the officials is that they don’t need to worry about me standing for office.?