raw Population Decline Are You Ready Dr Graham Kenny

And welcome back. So from time to time today, we've talked about long-term trends and their impact on strategy and strategic planning and how to include them and how to make sure that we're not being fanciful in our thinking. Well, today we have a real special treat for you as our closing, closing session is with Dr. Graham Kenny. So I'm going to invite Graham to turn on his microphone and camera, and as he does so, I'm just going to introduce him. So, Dr. Graham Kenny, he's an internationally recognized expert in strategy and performance measurement. He writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review, has written more than 70 articles for international journals, and has authored 5 books. Passionate about helping boards, executives, and managers lead successful organizations in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. Graham's executive experience has been extensive as a turnaround manager, CEO, plant manager, market development manager, design engineer, and construction supervisor. He has also enjoyed a successful academic career, having been a professor of management in universities in the US and Canada. And it looks as if we have Graham by audio. Are we here? Are you hearing me, Graham? I'm hearing his audio. Graham? I can hear the clicking. Graham, you're not hearing me? Hmm. Huh. Let's see. Graham? Uh, Graham, you're not hearing? Uh, let me, let me try and send him a text message to have him know that he's being heard. Graham, we can hear you. Can hear birds in the— Barry Graham is calling us from Australia. We can hear him, huh? Something seems to be happening with his reception. Hey, this is a new one. Sign language. Hmm, he can't hear me, but I can hear him. Grim, are you hearing me? Seeing me? Christopher says, "Time for hand puppets." Okay, I'm gonna take Graham from the stage and try to bring him back up. Let's try something a little different. Hearing perfectly, great sound. Chris, that, that, that comment about hand puppets was, uh, okay. I'm going to try again, folks. Apologies for this. Graham, can you hear me?

Oh dear. Okay.

Um, folks, I'm not sure what the story is, but I'm going to send him an email. Graham not hearing us. And not— I don't think he's accessing the chat there. Graham, are you seeing this? Um, let me try something here, folks. Otherwise, we just close out, give people thanks.

Close out because people leave.

Folks, we're gonna try one more time, and then without any luck, we're gonna have to arrange something else, like a private, a private chat, and just record them separately. That would work. Yeah, Graham, are you hearing us? Very, very strange that we'd be hearing everything he's doing, but, but he's not hearing us and not seeing Osiris. Very strange. Well, today has been a day of firsts, I could tell you. First time things are happening and very difficult to understand why and how.

And— Ah, hello!

Hi, Graham!

Now I just got my Rode microphone, so now I'm not on the extended microphone, so we're right there. Can't see myself at the moment.

Okay.

We're getting there.

Sorry, great. No, we're not seeing— now, I don't know, no problem.

It's just not identifying that microphone, which is in addition to the computer.

So, are you hearing me, Graham?

I can hear you.

Yeah, okay, great, great. Well, I just introduced you a while ago, so we're, we're ready to have you go ahead. And, and are you able to see the chat? So that we could communicate with you?

I haven't got a picture of myself. I can't see my photo, I don't know what's going on there. I'll probably try something.

Are you using a phone?

No, no, no, I've got a laptop here.

A laptop.

Can you see me?

Okay.

Can you see me?

No, we can't see you.

All right, okay, so well, it's probably a good thing, you see.

I'm thinking you might go ahead and just observe that. Can you see the chat where we're adding, we're dropping comments?

Yeah, look, I'm terribly sorry about this, one of those glitches, but yeah, it wasn't identifying the microphone and, uh, I've, uh, uh, yeah, I don't know what we're gonna do. Well, I can just keep going and I can see you.

I think so. And I'll—

we're all set.

All right. Okay, well, Graham, I just introduced you and told them your background, so handing over to you.

Thanks very much, Francis, and I apologize for the technical hitch here. Um, I'm talking to you from Sydney, Australia, and, uh, it's 7 o'clock in the morning and, um I'm really delighted to be a part of this event. I wanted to talk briefly about this question of population decline and raise people's awareness of the issue because I don't think we're really talking about it much. There's a lot of talk about climate change and all those things, but not really about this population issue. So I'm just going to— thought, I thought of what I'd do here is go through a few stats with the audience and you, Francis, and then just sort of throw it open for discussion because, um, I think it's a work in progress. Well, certainly work in progress as far as, uh, countries and companies are concerned. And I'm going to actually contrast Australia with Japan in terms of how it's handling this problem. So it's a big topic. As I say, it's got an impact on countries and companies and We'll have a look at Japan and Australia. Now, there's a very important statistic here, and it is the stat which is, um, the required birth rate for a population to replace itself. It's actually 2.1. It might be 2.07, but we might argue about the second decimal point, but we'll go with 2.1 because because that means that any woman over 15 years of age in a population on average needs to have 2.1 children to keep— replace the population, just to maintain the population. That isn't happening. And I'll give you some stats now which are quite alarming. And they're alarming at one level in terms of business. If you're worried about the environment, you might say that's a relief. Party, they are. It's the stats. Um, Japan is 1.3. Remember, 2.1, as I read out these figures. So Japan is 1.3, and Francis, I've looked up Jamaica, it's 1.4, just slightly ahead of Japan. China is 1.2, Australia is 1.7, the UK is 1.6, The United States is 1.7. Now, if you're thinking that, well, these are all countries that are kind of Western-style countries, uh, you haven't mentioned, uh, well, not in the case of China and Japan, I guess, but you think about Australia, the UK, and the US, certainly 1.7 Australia, 1.6 UK, 1.7 US. You might think, well, what about those other countries, the developing countries, and countries with different religious backgrounds. Well, Iran is 1.7 and India is 2, just slightly below replacement, but has declined from 6, 60 years ago. 6, 60 years ago. Now, um, these are big changes, and, uh, it's come about because women want to be in the workforce. And in the '60s, of course, with women's liberation and so on, then women said, well, I want to be part of the workforce because, um, slight— some of it's economic, but also I think it's a question of self-esteem, having a continuing career, all those wonderful things. So I don't think that's going to turn back. We could argue about that, but discuss that a minute. But I don't think it's going to turn back. I think we are looking at a permanent shift here. And when you have that change, uh, and you are at work 5 days a week, then looking after several children, uh, is not easy. So that's what's happened. Now let's just take a look at Japan and Australia because they're really quite contrasting Um, Japan's an interesting case, and, uh, I've been to Japan a couple of times. If any of, uh, people at this conference haven't been to Japan, I certainly recommend it. It's a stunning country in so many ways. One of the things you do notice in Japan, um, is that all the work is done by Japanese people. And what I mean by that is there are no migrant groups that might be, for for example, cleaning your hotel rooms or working the trains or buses, everyone in Japan, from the people who clean your rooms all the way through, are all Japanese-born. And that strikes you because as an Australian, we have a very different pattern, but I'll get onto that in a minute. So what's predicted for Japan is that the population will decline from 125 million, which is what it is today, to 88 million— 88 million, uh, by 2065. I'm pausing to let that number sink in. 125 today to 88 million in just on 30 years. Now, what that means is that Japan has a declining labor force and an aging population, relatively. Uh, in fact, it's got the oldest, uh, in terms of proportion, oldest population of people over 60 in the world. Decreasing taxation base and the potential for deflation. I think it's more than potential. I think there will be deflation. Now, deflation is when assets decrease in value. Now, any economist will tell you that that's a scary prospect because everything's built on inflation. If I buy a house or any property, the price of it will go up. If I think it's going to go down, I won't be buying it at all. So economics does not work under deflation. Um, so we haven't got any models to deal with that because we haven't actually had to face it. So that's an interesting thing. Now, what's happening in company effects— so this is the country effects in Japan. What's happening in the company effects? You just think about it for a moment. Uh, if you're in the baby goods industry, the child care industry, the preschool education industry, all these industries will be looking at declining demand. Um, and I'm sure it's already happened in Japan, but as that baby bust goes through the system, then there'll be a decline in things like buildings and building requirements. So building materials won't be required and so on. Um, so it's really, uh, it's really quite a stunning prospect. Now, Japan is quite interesting because Japan steadfastly refuses refuses to engage in large-scale immigration. Um, and there's a number of reasons for that. Cultural, maybe. Multicultural is certainly one of them. So this is where I want to get on to Australia. Um, and Australia is a— Australia is an interesting and contrasting country because it has the opposite approach. So during COVID our migration policy slowed a bit. As it did all around the globe because people's movement was restricted. But last financial— last year, I should say, last year we took in 400,000 migrants, and migration has increased at least in the short term. And on a population of 26 million, 400,000 is quite high. It's almost— I saw a figure the other day, it could be as high as half a million. So we're going in the opposite direction to Japan. So it provides a very interesting contrast. So we won't be facing a housing, uh, surplus, but in fact we've got a housing crisis in Australia at the moment, uh, because we don't have enough housing to allow people to, well, live basically. And the price of housing is going up and up and up. So, uh, what's the impact of that on a country? Well, it's not benign. It's not as though, uh, you're saying, well, it's just going to be business as usual, because there's a change in the ethnic mix of— in Australia. Now, that's not a racial con— uh, comment. What I'm talking about here is that with a change in the racial mix of a country, because most of our migrants are coming from India secondly from China, and third from England. And England is the term that the Bureau of Statistics uses, uh, they don't say the United Kingdom but England. So we must have them separated by, uh, England, uh, Scotland and Wales, or an island, Northern Ireland. But in any case, um, the two biggest groups are India and China. And they dominate in terms of intakes. And that is changing the ethnic mix in Australia. And that has an impact again on business, because this is really about long-term and sustainable strategic planning. The conference is— and what we're looking at here is that with that ethnic mix, then there's also a mix in tastes and preferences of consumers. Restaurants, uh, schooling perhaps. Certainly in terms of the composition of shops, uh, what's going to be successful, you need to be paying attention. If you say, uh, born in Australia and running a shop, you've got to be able to cater for, uh, migrant groups as well. Um, so I think there's a part of that to be played out. And incidentally, And this is for you, Francis, particularly. It's about cricket. When you see India playing Australia in cricket, for those that know cricket, at least half the crowd will be of Indian background, which really does rev the crowd along. So it's great to see, but it is a very marked difference. So look, um, they were the observations. I wanted to throw this open. I've been talking for about 20 minutes. I want to throw it open, but Q&A and comments. Um, I think it's just, uh, something— it's a topic I don't think has had enough, uh, airplay. We've been talking a lot about climate change, and it's been the preoccupation of conversations all around the globe. And that's important. But I think we've also got now a shift in demographics. And by the way, if we think that Australia, for example, is just going to sustain itself by taking in more and more, uh, Indian migrants, as an example, uh, then India itself is not replacing its population because it's below 2.1. So eventually those in this sort of wells of, of migration could actually start to dry up. And I will say this because I've been in the medical system recently, um, uh, our medical system, our hospitals would not work at all without migrants from the Philippines, Nepal, and so on. And, um, it's quite interesting to see. So the 3 suggested company actions come out of this. I'm going to throw these out there for discussion. The first one is I think companies now have to take a deeper interest in demographics. A deeper interest in demographics. Once it was just something that the demographers worried about and governments had to deal with. But I think now As part of sustainable strategic planning, larger companies at least need to be looking at the composition of the population, the trend in terms of ages, and also the, uh, ethnic mix, because it's important to the future of a company. The second thing is, I think, to be alert to whether your industry is becoming stagnant. Um, certain industries, particularly say for example in the case of Japan, will become stagnant. There won't be growth opportunities in them. They'll just be, as I say, just going nowhere. And what happens with stagnant industries is competition intensifies and people start now to only operate on price. So that's a very important thing. The third thing I think company actions would be, be prepared to diversify. So that if an industry does start to look like it's becoming stagnant, then it might be time to look at something else. And that's the question of diversification. So there's my three action points out of this, Francis, and Happy to take any questions, comments, disagreements, whatever.

Thank you. Well, are you hearing me, Graham?

I'm hearing you now. I didn't for the first couple of words.

Okay, that's true. So I— you got me with the— that Jamaica is at 1.4, which is just a bit over Japan in terms of Yes, that's right.

So there won't be any Jamaicans left in another— No, I'm only kidding you. There will be Jamaicans.

Otherwise you won't have that Japanese.

We can't have that. No, it's not a question of not existing, but there will be a decline in Jamaicans, uh, uh, because you're not replacing yourself. So there you go.

Wow. So by 2065, if I follow the math, we would follow— we would have a 25% reduction in our population. Following the Japanese numbers if we don't do something about it, because we don't have a lot of—

yeah, it's about 25%. So yeah, well, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because, um, uh, sometimes Australians complain about the number of migrants coming in because it's quite disruptive. And, um, you know, it can be, uh, you have trouble communicating sometimes because they don't speak the language so well. But, you know, we look at the Japanese situation, you think, well, why don't we want to go there either?

No, because the— I gather what you're telling us is that their lack of migrants, or in other words, their lack of diversity, is part of the decline.

Yeah, because their birth rate has gone so low, 1.3, uh, and they're not bringing in migrants because it's, uh, I think they probably don't— they just got a different attitude to their culture. I mean, Japan is an amazing country because of the purity of it, I guess you would say, in top to bottom and the way they do things. Everything runs on time, everything's perfectly clean, uh, Everything just— you go, wow, wish we had some of this, but it's not sustainable.

Oh, okay. So there's a question.

Take any questions.

There's a question on the page. Are you seeing it?

Sorry, question is on the right-hand side here.

Yes. Sorry.

Uh, which one do you want me to deal with?

Is this— can you see the one on the stage right below from Ernesto? Yes.

Oh, is this valid for poor countries too? Ernesto, great question. The answer is yes, except for some African countries, Nigeria and those areas. Now the reason why Ernesto, um, Birth rates have been so high in the past. One of the reasons is, uh, um, is that child mortality was high. So if you had 6 children and 4 died because of various reasons, then you ended up with 2 or 3 children. But Sri Lanka— Sri Lanka's low, as I mentioned. India's 2. India. And by the way, I can tell you this, that China has now reached its peak population already. So China will now go into decline. Um, and you've said here, uh, Ernesto, I think that in these countries they should control their population since they do not have the resources to feed them, uh, give them public services including education. Um, yes, well, I think what's happened in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, across the, across the globe, is that health services have improved, child mortality has gone down, women have gone into the workforce, and they're having fewer children. And that's the combination that's going on there. But apart from that area around Nigeria and so on, which is still quite high, but mortality is also quite high.

There's a comment from Chris Schaefer.

Yes, Chris, good on you. Those issues seem to match what others need to consider: workforce, customer competition, diversification. The strategic solutions are only immigration, increasing the birth rate, increasing ways that women in the workforce are supported. I think that's, uh, I think that, Chris, it's a good point. Um, who's going to support women in the workforce? And what's happening is that they tend to— it tends to fall on, say, okay, let's support women in the workforce by better childcare. Who's going to do the childcare? The women are in the workforce. It's a— it's, it's not— I can't see that happening. And I'm close to it in Australia because I've got some children with children. Uh, and take my daughter, uh, Joanne, uh, she has a nanny. The nanny is from Colombia, not from Australia.. And, um, if I can, I can run that out across Sydney and you will find that that's what's happening. And we'll take another, another area, uh, house cleaning. Um, we get our house cleaned by a couple of people. They're from Korea and the Koreans, uh, I've got the market tied up. In terms of doing house cleaning. So, you know, it's, uh, all those sorts of occupations. And one of the reasons why they— not that they're not well educated, some of the Koreans are engineers— and, uh, that we're coming to Australia and, uh, just doing that job because they want a better life for their children. So, um, I'm not sure that more support for Australian mothers is going to stop the need for migration because the support will be coming from migrants. What about India? I mentioned India, Ernesto. Uh, it's got a birth rate of 2. Sometimes these birth rates are expressed in terms of, um, uh, births per 100,000 people, but it's also expressed this way. Per person, uh, of eligible birth age. India's 2. So India is going to be reaching its peak population soon, so we can't rely on the Indians to keep everything going. Another question: how to embrace diversity as a national strategy? Great points regarding how migrants change the dynamics of consumer behavior in a country. The US has unfortunately shifted towards anti-immigration, getting stagnant views. Um, well, I don't know about that. Uh, that's Cecilia. You might be from the US. Uh, no, you're Kenya. Uh, I think the US has still got a healthy migration policy, and in fact, uh, quite a lot of people coming from Mexico, as you know. Um, they're not quite— no don't know how to handle that. Now, I've lived in the United States, I've lived in Canada, um, and I lived actually right near the Mexican border in San Diego, and I've been into Mexico, and the contrast is absolutely remarkable, uh, in terms of standard living and cleanliness and all the other things. So it's no wonder that Mexicans want to come to the US for a better life because they're get a better standard of living. But I think the US is still taking in a large number of migrants. Yeah. Are we not meeting the planet's carrying capacity? What is the strategic solutions? Chris, that's a very interesting point. There are those that are saying this is great news for the planet, that once we reach peak population, that in fact will be— we'll be moving areas back, you know, rewilding. There's a concept called rewilding, which is where people are turning areas back to the wild. You would have noticed that, picked it up in, say, Scotland. There's a rewilding movement in Scotland where, uh, they want to turn— reintroduce some of the early, uh, animals back into Scotland. I think they've reintroduced bulls and deer— on a deer, but, uh, certain deer anyhow. But the thing is that this is an interesting idea, that meeting the planet's carrying capacity might actually— in other words, we might be two things coming together. We're overrunning the planet with plastics and using up resources at vast rates. And we've got another part of this, which is that the population is peaking, which means that we'll be taking pressure off the planet. It's interesting how two things can run together here. Next one.

Don't know that we have another question.

I'm interested. I'd like to throw it out if I can. Francis, got a couple of minutes?

Sure.

I'm wondering if anyone in the audience has suggestions around what companies can do. Um, I mentioned the 3 things: take a deeper interest in demographics. I think demographics is something that weren't on the agenda for most companies. The second one is be alert to whether your industry is becoming stagnant. For example, if you're in an area where there isn't a growth. And the third one was be prepared to diversify. Are there any other suggestions around company actions? I'd be very pleased to hear of what people might suggest a company could do under these circumstances. Whether in Japan or Australia?

Just typing up your question. What can companies do? Yeah, what else can companies do? You know, we spent the— in terms of background, we spent the whole day talking about strategic planning in companies and the reason to think long and the reason to do long-term thinking. And this is really, this is really, uh, a scary wake-up call. I mean, it's, it's— and I'm— some background, of course. I'm here in Jamaica. You quoted the number for Jamaica being just a little bit over Japan. And recently the Prime Minister spoke about bringing in migrants, and everybody kind of laughed and said, well, that's nonsense. But I, I, I wonder if— I don't remember hearing about the population in Jamaica declining, but No, I know, I realize that he may be softening us up for some reality that's— that unless our behavior changes, or unless we bring in migrants— I'm sorry, that is what he's suggesting— but unless our behavior changes as a people, because we don't have that many migrants, that we are in big trouble.

Well, you're right there, um, and these figures I've quoted are from the World Bank, so it's from authoritative sources. And Jamaica is 1.4. Um, I, I didn't know that you'd laugh at the idea of having migrants. I mean, Australia is just taken for granted that, um, we have migrants. I'll give you a little bit of background there. Um, after the Second World War, um, up to the Second World War, we're pretty homogeneous. Now I'm not talking about the indigenous population, the Aboriginals, which of course the British came to Australia and settled here, uh, I'm talking now about the population post-white settlement, was pretty homogeneous in that it was English, Irish, Scottish, British. After the Second World War, 1945, the decision was made to take migrants from other countries because, well, they were displaced in many cases. Europe was in a mess, and, uh, the requirements as Australia to take migrants as out of our duty. But also, I think there was a view that we wanted to grow the country. At that time, a lot of people came from Italy and Greece. In fact, Melbourne has the largest population of Greek descendants outside of Greece anywhere in the world. So if you go to Melbourne, you'll find lots of great Greek restaurants, and the Italian and Greek migrants have integrated perfectly into the country. But when they first arrived, it was a bit of a reaction like you mentioned, Francis. Do we really need it? And, um, but you know, now it's taken for granted. Um, and then that migrant, uh, there's my— that migration has happened since. Now a lot of British that come to Australia and they land in Sydney, and I've seen these reports on the BBC, and their reports are quite surprised how Asian Sydney is. Uh, that's because we've taken a lot of people from places like Vietnam, uh, China, Thailand. Thai restaurants— I'll tell you a little anecdote here. After— during the Gold Rush, which is going back before this, in the 1800s, a lot of Chinese people came to Australia. And you will go— you can go to any country town in Australia and you'll find a Chinese restaurant. Now you will find hundreds of Thai restaurants in Sydney. Thai restaurants are everywhere and they're cheap and great. And, you know, so there— see the way these are changing. So we were— if someone suggested not taking migrants into Australia, Australians would laugh, whereas you're getting the opposite reaction in Jamaica, which I think I find quite amusing. Migrants, we don't need them. That's what you're saying in Jamaica.

We'd be saying exactly.

So we're saying here, migrants, not have migrants, you gotta be joking. We wouldn't be able to operate the hospitals.

The Cubans come.

Oh, we're, we're, we're not, we're not anywhere near, near that. But, but you're essentially predicting that we are. Madelina is suggesting that companies could provide better maternity leave benefits.

Yeah, I think that's true. We don't have— well, actually, Australia has pretty generous, uh, Madelina. I can tell you this now. In Australia, we are— you're in Jamaica, uh, Madelina, um, Australia is very generous, uh, it's very generous on everything. I mean, you— I'll give you some examples. If you join a company in Australia you get 4 weeks annual leave in that first year. In the United States, you might get 2 weeks leave after 2 years of work. Um, uh, you get paternity leave and maternity leave here. So you'll get 6 months maternity leave here, Magdalena, to have a child. 6 months maternity leave on pay. So, you know, um, We have free health services, but you also have private services if you want to go there. So there's no shortage of support for mothers that want to have children. But it's just that people, women, are saying, I want to have a career too. And a career and 6 children don't work too well. Career and 4 children don't work too well. I have 2 children. Uh, one has two children and one has one. Now you average that out, that's 1.5. They're not keeping up with the population, but that's pretty standard, you know, it's pretty standard. A lot of women are having one child these days. So, so Magdalena, there's plenty of support, but it's just not— it's not the thing that's needed at the moment.

What's the, what's the, the number in Australia, um, Graham?

Again, birth rate is 1.7, a little bit ahead. You might be surprised at that. Um, I think what's surprising is when you get to countries like Iran at 1.7, it's a Muslim country. You might say, oh, Muslims have more children, and, uh, not so. Um, it's a question of how educated, uh, women are in those countries. It's a question of the, uh, health systems. And then, um, you know, so it's, it's, uh, it's not— doesn't seem to go along religious lines. It runs along, um, education. And also, I think, the idea that women want a career. Oh, that's— and that's— I don't think that's going to go backwards. With all the support, with all the support that you can think of. Australia's support systems for women are terrific. You get 6 months paid maternity leave, um, health system that's free, um, you know, you just couldn't think of anything better. But as I say, you know, the, um, and if you want nanny services, they'll be provided by migrants.

Whoa, you're doing all of that and you're—

I'll give you one example. You might know you're running 45 minutes here. I was running one of my sessions the other day in Sydney on, uh, business strategy. I had 3 people from an aged person's home and I said, well, where do you get your staff from? Nepal, they said. I said, why Nepal? They said, well, we've got Nepalese staff already, so they can link up with our staff. And the Nepalese are well educated in looking after people in aged care, and, um, uh, they're just the ideal candidates. So their place is largely run by Nepalese staff. They're very good staff, they're caring, they've got a great culture, um, you know, and so on. I just went, wow, there you go. There's one example where they, they just could not operate at all, at all without Nepalese migrants.

Wow. Well, so Australia is doing a lot of the right things and it's only gotten to 1.7, which from 1.4 looks like a very, very far away to go.

You're at 1.4, you mean? Yeah, and it'll be declining, it'll be going down probably.

So, so we, we're, we're actually about to consult with, or consulting with, a tertiary institution. And of course we're, we're adding the fact that yes, you're, you need to look at the long term, which is what we've talked about all day. But now I'm thinking that there's a whole other angle with respect to, you know, the— will their student— what will happen to their potential student population over time? Something's gonna happen, basically what you're saying, and it's not good right now. It's gonna— they're gonna be shrinking. So no matter what you do, no matter what, unless you go to some other country or you attract people from outside the country, the number of potential students is going to fall.

Yes, well, that's a good, that's a good point. And I mean, if we looked at the— just went to your Bureau of Stats and looked at the breakup of ages and numbers in those brackets and laid that down for the university and said, well, look, you know, look at the way this funnel is working, um, you might be in trouble. Now there's another interesting contrast, Francis, because our universities would be in trouble too if we didn't have Chinese and Indian students coming as students to the country. Foreign students are funding a lot of our education.

So no, there's nobody wants to come. Wow, we don't have that.

Okay, so no, no. So Sydney University, University of New South Wales, Melbourne University, you name them, Um, you walk around that campus and you'll find lots and lots of Chinese and Indian faces, but they've come on a student visa. What we have, a student visa system. Come to Australia on a student visa. The end of that time, they're supposed to go back to their own country, but they can apply to stay, and then they'll be considered, uh, on its merits. So our migration policies very much towards skilled migration, um, so that we want to bring in people where there are gaps and not pushing people out that might have their own jobs here. But again, it's a, it's a completely different system, uh, to what you're talking about in Jamaica.

Whoa, whoa, you know, there's, there's, you know, we've talked all day about companies that have 5-year strategic plans and they're only looking 5 years out. Um, I guess you could get away with that in certain countries, but essentially what you're seeing is that if you don't include this trend in your thinking, you will probably be blindsided by— you'll probably be putting your company at jeopardy. If you're not, you're just sealing your own fate by fooling around on the margins, but not realizing that your market or your employees or whatever human capital you happen to be using, that that supply is dramatically dwindling. And unless something big changes, it's not going to go in the opposite direction. I guess that's the message. Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, and I don't think it's just being talked about enough. At the company level. And I, and, um, I think for certain large companies, you know, they could be looking at some serious, um, decline. If you're in the building, building materials industry in Japan, for example, you might be thinking, well, we're in trouble here unless we charge up exports or something. We're going to be just looking at smaller and smaller market.

We're having a boom right now in— I don't know if it's not a big boom, but, but there's a lot of people building upscale apartments right now. So the question has been, for, for whom? People been asking that anyway.

But you're having a boom in— what did you say there?

Upscale apartments, right?

Okay, I've got some questions over here, I think. Oh, that was 11 minutes ago. Recognize that a growth sector can be stagnant. Um, IT sector is a growth sector that seems to be increasingly male-dominated, right? Uh, well, I'm not sure it's increasingly dominated, uh, Cecilia. I thought it already had been. I had thought it had been from the outset. But nonetheless, stagnant IT as a sector. Uh, I'm not sure it's stagnant as a sector. I think the IT is pretty— it's one of the areas where we see lots of growth. Um, auto manufacturing is transforming for innovation growth, but how many women I see. So you, you're talking about women in the C-suite and so on. That's— I think that might be a different issue. I don't want to tackle that one today, but it is a different issue. But nonetheless, it's one that Australia again is seeing major changes in, on boards and so on.

So what's that? Well, it's sort It's so tempting to have this be someone else's problem in some other part of the world. It's— but you brought, you brought it home so beautifully, I guess, and, and frighteningly to, to home by mentioning our numbers. Um, yeah.

Now I've got some other— I don't know what time we've got here. I thought we were on 45 minutes, but we can—

yeah, we're over time, but we have a, we have a couple more minutes.

Go ahead. Couple more minutes. Look, you can't waste minutes. You're going to get so many in, in your lifetime. Um, oh, here we are. Here's someone, uh, from, uh, Amy. Amy says, interesting, all the aged care in Florida, uh, come from the Caribbean, especially the Bahamas and Haiti. Okay. Um, I've got one here. Wow, this is great maternity and paternity services in Australia. Uh, okay, yeah, looking at paternity leave. Well, you might have to come over and join the workforce to get the benefits here, I think. Um, yeah, so certainly, um, there's another one down below. The population, uh, from MC again. The population trend is particularly important, uh, is particularly important info for business development. Uh, no. Okay, that's an interesting idea. There's probably a need to establish business on a global basis as opposed to country-only level. Oh, in other words, if you've got a domestic market that's declining, then you go to— yeah, so you go to another country. That's true. I think the other thing there as well. Magdalena is starting to look at export markets. And of course, Japan's always been an amazing exporter of cars and electronics. Now, of course, a lot of that's now made in countries like Thailand or Vietnam— Vietnam, I think it is really— and China. But, uh, so they're not— so they're— so the companies are growing because they're using the population of other countries to do the work. That is definitely, um, one thing you can see there with Japan.

Well, well, Graham, I think we're, we're right up to our time, actually a little bit over. Thanks for, uh, wow, amazing wake-up call. As I said, we've been talking about long-term strategy all day. Kind of in theory, but we never, you know, we didn't actually have a specific concern to sort of clarify our attention. And you've definitely provided that, definitely sort of guided, or guided, or I would say, um, point of view, giving us something to think about and something to— I'm going to bring into a client in a couple of weeks' time because As I mentioned, they draw students from a younger population, and if that population is dwindling, then their long-term strategic plan can't be just as if it's going to be infinite growth. It has to take it— take this into account. So that's a very— that's a very practical and very immediate application of what you've told us that I had no idea. I didn't think we were affected, frankly. So to drop our numbers just makes me think that I need to do some research and have them know, have them know these numbers for themselves. And I imagine other folks in our audience are also either wondering or they're hearing that in their long-term strategic planning activities, they need to bring their clients into this world in which we— nothing— it makes a 5-year plan look somewhat ridiculous, frankly. It's like, that's, that's a joke because you, you aren't even— let alone population, you aren't bringing into, bringing into focus any of the other trends that are going to impact your business regardless of whether you like them politically or not. Yeah, which is where we're at. So, Graham, thank you so much for spending time with us.

Oh, it's a pleasure, and thank you very much. I saw— sorry about the technical hitch there. I don't know what went wrong, but we, we got there in the end and people don't know what I look like, which is probably a good thing.

Did you do this on purpose because you weren't camera ready?

Tell us. Okay, thanks very much, Francis.

Thank you. Okay, thanks, Gra, all the best. Bye-bye. Okay folks, so we're gonna just roll into the last session of the evening, which comes before our networking session. So Let me introduce you to— if you have not seen Dale on camera, this is one of those rare opportunities to do so.

Hello everybody!

So we're going to close out the evening just by thanking some folks who have helped to make our day, our conference, a reality. And as I mentioned, afterwards there's a networking session, which means that we're going to be hanging around by the tables and just kind of— if we had some drinks to drink— actually, we do have rum punch, don't we?

You can have rum punch. I'm going to my bed. I'm exhausted. We've had a great conference, but I'm exhausted.

One will keep going and one will go to her bed.

You'll be asleep.

Anyway, it's only for an hour, another networking session. We'll leave it open actually indefinitely, but we'll talk. But anyway, let's get around to the business of thanking each and every one of our presenters, our panelists, participants, Folks, you have no idea what we put people through. You have no— unless you're a presenter or a panelist, you have no idea of the forms, the emails, the dry runs, the con— the WhatsApp groups, the LinkedIn groups, endless, endless instructions and updates. And so thanks, a big thank you to all of our presenters and panelists.

And for people who stayed all day, Chris and Alan, I want to say a spe— I'm saying thank you to everybody, But Chris and Alan, you've been with us from this morning, and I know you must be exhausted because you worked hard this week to get your presentation into us as well. So special kudos to all of you. Ami, I know you worked really hard as well. You always show up and interview people for us.

And, you know, extra—

that's extra work.

Extra work because we can't interview everybody. So, you know, I can— we can open the people thing and go through each one to say thank you, but because of time, I don't think we can. But just know that each of you have been— and we meet some great people during these conferences. We start off thinking what we want to do, and then we spend 3 or 4 months doing it. And I say chasing people, and it— I get very embarrassed because we are asked asking you to support us and support our ideas and to make it happen. It's always time-consuming, so thank you, thank you.

As well, for those who put up with doing their first videos, so bring them up, folks. As you know, we, we have 15 downloads, I think, available today, and I don't— I put the link to the downloads in the chat because they are available until midnight tonight, that's UCT minus 5 Central Time. But many of them were doing their first solo videos, and, and literally they're sitting in front of a camera like this with no audience, and they're delivering content that they've thought about, intellectual property that they're sharing, 20 to 40 minutes. And for many, it's the first time they're doing this kind of activity. Then they have to edit it, some of them. Some added in videos and music and all kinds of stuff.

Alan, what did he tell us? He edited his first ever Zoom video, and we told him, if you stick with us, you're going to learn new things.

I'm pretty sure that's what I said.

Ami, you're the same way. Initially you were like, I don't know how to do that, and we said, stick with us, you'll learn new things. And I think we tell people that all the time. Ernesto, your video was excellent, and you said, oh my God, it's my first time too, and I thought you did a good job. So, you know, just sometimes step out a little bit. And, you know, we're embarrassed to keep saying, come with us, come with us. We did the same thing last year in the Caribbean. We had our first Caribbean strategy conference and we were pulling people and saying, you guys need to come, you need to learn this. So we're doing it again. It's a pity we didn't have Graham to open the conference. Had I known what he had, we would have had him open the conference because that was mind-boggling what he shared.

So, very good. A pause for thought. And thank you to our audience. You don't have to be a presenter for us to thank you. We had hundreds register and looks like a few hundred made it to the platform, the content platform.

The actual analytics because we were too busy all day to even go back and look. We wanted to give more people feedback, but the team, fortunately or unfortunately, is Francis Dale and Nick, who has been great in helping us.

Right, what is that, Nick?

Still with us. He's— we call him our intern, but the team is basically 3 people, and we put— we tell people we've worked 7 days a week for the last 3 weeks to pull this off. I'm going to sleep tomorrow, and we're going to the beach next weekend, so that's good.

We are actually taking time off. Um, anyone else who want to thank?

Um, we'll keep thanking them. I think there's some I see something in the back. The ami said, give me a chance to use StreamYard. Okay, we will.

All kinds of comments coming through.

Shared presentation that replicates Ginger and Fred. Oh, okay, good.

All kinds of comments. Give me a chance to use StreamYard. Credit to Alan. So folks, we don't want to keep you from each other because in the next, next phase, or which is basically networking. The tables, the tables will be open and you can move around at will and with your camera and with your video and audio, chat, meet people for as long as— basically we'll leave it open for the rest of the evening, but probably about, more realistically, a half an hour or so.

She's down in, in Kenya. It's like 2 AM in Kenya, isn't it? What time is it? She's still with us.

It's late in Kenya. Late in Kenya, I think 1 AM or so.

Oh, you're in Venezuela, so I'm not sure what time it is there, but thank you for staying with us all day as well. I can't see all the people because I came up from my computer. Well, not my computer, I can see everybody. So if I'm not calling your name, it's because I can't see you right now. But yes, go into networking and meet some people if you'd like. If you don't want to, you can just leave.

And remember that the content platform is open for the rest of the evening. Um, I probably won't stay up to close it down. Dynamic Objectives, uh, it's going to be open. So there are more videos if you haven't watched them. They are great, they really are. I mean, we've had 32 videos. That's a monumental piece of work by a committed group. And also, um, another last bit of sales pitch, the Don't forget, there is a link that you can get a 14-day trial to Jump Leap or Long-Term Strategy Newsletter. And finally, the full ticket is still on sale today. Um, it'll assume its full price tomorrow, so it's available as a discount. Don't miss that. If— come to us for the link if you need the link, but it's on, it's on the content platform as well. So having said that, if we missed anyone, there's our apologies. We mean to thank everyone.

Yeah, open the people.

So maybe we didn't get to, but take care everyone.

Goodbye everybody. Bye from 2023. We're out of here.

See you in the— see you at the tables just a bit. I'll keep Dale here so she can talk to a few people. No, bye guys.