He also talked about the very real ethical issues that a retail chain such as his faces when their suppliers use part of their own supply chain out of a country with a military regime such as Burma. On the one hand you want to provide opportunity to people in less well to do countries, but on the other hand you need to be sure that there is not exploitation going on in the delivery chain of your own supply and services. No easy answers for this sort of thing?

Michael Luscombe also talked about the responsibility of corporate leaders to be examples of what they expect their people to follow. He noted how in his own company, he and his CFO were the first people to to get environmentally efficient vehicles versus the issue in the US where recently executives at AIG were found to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on themselves the weekend after the government had bailed out their organisation from bankruptcy.

Corporate governance is a very real issue. I was hugely impressed by a man whom had stayed within the one organisation for over 30 years and talked passionately about the opportunities it have given him and how he felt it his responsibility to give to others coming through the ranks in his company. He was able to provide examples about improvements that had been made by a single employee in a single checkout despite the fact that she was just one employee in 190,000 (about 1 in 50 Australians!).

If it was an act, then this man is brilliant, but I for one left feeling that if Michael Luscombe is representative of the corporate leadership that will be in charge in this country for the next 10-20 years then we are in good hands.

Perhaps the rest of the world could learn a lot from the Michael Luscombe approach?

Until next time. Here’s to your success!

Chris