'Get rid of bosses who don't perform'

Resign Mark Weldon - heed your own words and resign

I agree with Mr Coburn that we already, (in the majority), have a hard working culture and work ethic in this country. But the fact remains that productivity in this country is appalling for a number of reasons: poor use of capital and investment, poor management and restrictive legislation and regulations to allow businesses to maximise opportunities available.

Too often I hear people go on about how and businesses expect workers to "lift productivity" and then make a direct link that this must mean businesses expect people to work harder, longer hours and get paid less. this is simply not the case. Improving productivity is not about working harder, it is about working smarter and making the most of the opportunities we have to lift the overall contribution and value we make to an organization, a community and our families. For example, who is the more productive; the person who spends 8 hours finishing a piece of work as opposed to the person who spends 10 hours finishing the same piece of work?

Its a bit simplistic to say that middle management just need to get a set.

"It is not the strongest of species which survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." Charles Darwin Isn't it interesting that in a short time we have turned our understanding of evolution around to think that Darwin said survial of the fitest meant the strongest and the most intelligent. Get rid of managers that are not "the ones most repsonsive to change"

The other thing that would help would be to bring some relativity to the exorbitant salary packages of some of the countries CEO's. Some CEO's have packages that dwarf (relative to their market cap)those heading up some of the countries largest companies. That surplus could be used in these tough times to assist those smaller companies and help stave off higher unemployment rates.

well Mr Weldon should follow his words and fall on his sword as the NZX hasnt performed

Why is the government obsessed with roads. There are other infrastructure projects (ie Rail and Clifford Bay Ferry Terminal) that would make the countries transport networks vastly more efficient than a few roads will do.

It sounds sensible, but no doubt most of the poor performers will have very attractive exit packages available to them and will live happily ever after on a gulf island or Gold Coast apartment, while the shareholders suffer the "fruits" of their failures.

Dear Mark Weldon, good suggestion, but don't stop at Chief Executives! For many years there has been much talk in this country of improving productivity. But how much harder must we expect the average New Zealander to work, considering we live in a time of incredible computing and networking power, machinery that assists with manual labour, and enlightened perspectives on the importance of having a good balance between work and leisure time?

In my opinion we are already a hard working nation with a solid work ethic. So why do we have such a low GDP compared to other nations? I can't give you all the answers to that important question but I do know something that contributes enormously to poor productivity: bad managers.

Everywhere in this country there are (usually) large businesses or institutions who employ middle managers that should not be there. The raison d'etre of a manager is to remove the barriers faced by staff, to enable them to do their jobs properly. But alas we are falling short on this score.

We have an absolute SHOCKING quality of management in this country. This is not related to knowledge and training, it is because many people in management are too scared to do their jobs properly. They kowtow to senior management whilst trying to look effective by micro-managing their staff. For every good middle manager in this country there are probably a hundred ones that are an epic fail.

The solution? Senior management must take responsibility for this. They, too, have a role in ensuring their staff have no barriers. They need to examine the performance of middle managers more closely and if they are a barrier... remove them.

Managers of New Zealand you have two options: grow some balls and start going in to bat for the team, or continue being a seagull - sweeping in from nowhere to poo on top of a worker, and if they are unlucky enough steal their lunch too.

Jarrod Coburn is the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Resilience Trust - www.nzrt.org.nz

If we follow Mark's logic then he should be sacked. Declining volumes traded, lack of floats and cost increases have been the hallmark of the NZX for the past few years. Not to mention an excessive renumeration package for the CEO. But like any other badly performing CEO he can blame the financial crisis and recession.