Strategic Kata is thinking shaped by practice, mostly my years in government, banking and education, and alongside that runs an interest in how things work, especially how the economic environment shapes an organisation and its people, and how policy drives the behaviour of both.
Follow the money, people say, and more often than not they’re right; behind most decisions sits an intention and a consequence, and underneath both the old human mix of greed, fear and wanting more, 21st century or not. I’ve come to think that when a nation prospers its people get on with life, and when it doesn’t, the friction starts.
These tools are how I keep watching that environment, with New Zealand as the case; each is a standalone page that updates on its own schedule. The dashboards show what’s happening, and the macro panel is also the one I check for my own retirement, because whether the money lasts depends on the same conditions. The Not a Fishbowl model tests what other people say about it against the whole system, borders included. The articles are where I work out what it does to people and organisations.
Not a Fishbowl: a systems-thinking model of how the world economy moves New Zealand, built from reinforcing and balancing loops whose status is read from live data each week. Published economic commentary is run through it to see which loops an argument uses, which it leaves out, and whether it stops at the border; each test is scored when its review date comes, and the misses stay on the record. Read with: New Zealand is Not a Fishbowl.
Macro Early-Warning Panel: six indicators watched for inflation, deflation and stagflation risk to a New Zealand retirement portfolio: NZ unemployment, NZ CPI, NZ GDP, US headline PCE, NZD/USD and the Global Dairy Trade price index. The NZ figures change each quarter when Stats NZ publishes. The headline regime moves only on a trend confirmed over three quarters, never on a single breach. How it was built: Vibe Coding: A Macro Early-Warning Dashboard.
New Zealand Labour Market: unemployment, employment and underutilisation from the Household Labour Force Survey, seasonally adjusted, March 2010 to the latest quarter. Updated about five to six weeks after each quarter ends. Read with: The Number I Choose to Watch.
Not financial advice. These are personal monitoring tools, published as I use them.