Its been pretty much business as usual as Poutama rolled on from 2019 and into 2020. We held a team planning session towards the end of January. The next generation of Poutama babies thoroughly enjoyed the planning session but weren’t too impressed with the KPIs that were set for them!!
While we have a few challenges around resources we’ve managed to adjust some of our services so that our reach throughout Aotearoa can be extended.
Key among these adjustments will be the roll out of a series of webinars. Poutama believes it can get a greater reach throughout the country via webinars plus they can be watched anytime from just about anywhere. We’re still working on the topics that the webinars will deliver but some good ideas were received from the customer surveys done after each CL2IMB hui that were held between 2017-2019.
We’ve re-looked at our funds management idea that was going to be Poutama Capital but have decided that due to the huge amount of compliance that is required to operate an investment fund, especially a retail fund, Poutama is better off to instead offer educational workshops on investment and work with established fund managers to help entities with investment. Poutama will continue though to work on opportunities for co-investment with other Māori entities.
Our collaborative efforts will continue with a focus on different activities for different parts of the country. We’re planning to work with Far North iwi entities around bringing them together to look at opportunities in the region. One of these will be through working with the Ngawha Innovation & Enterprise Park.
We will also be looking into collaboration in the Health & Fitness and Fashion sectors as well as dairy collaboration around ovine, bovine and plant based milks. Existing collaborations such as Wairoa Kete Kai and our Hemp/CBD group, MIHI, should go next level. We’ll be re-orienting the HUI Collective and diversifying it from an F&B focus to also include the tourism and creative sectors. By initiating collaborative activities, Poutama working alongside Māori business is able to create scale and share both resources and risks.
For 2020 we’ll be aiming to have a lot stronger engagement with the political environment and government agencies particularly around lobbying for resources. Poutama is a totally independent and self-funded organisation and receives no support from Government. However with increasing demand on our services we’ll be putting greater effort into hounding politicians and government organisations to both obtain financial resources as well as leverage the resources that they hold. For these activities Poutama has taken on a ‘fixer’ to help drive our political and government agency engagement.
The Poutama whanau remains small (2 full-time & 4 part-time) but will be as nimble and flexible as ever. The focus will continue to be working with business on a kanohi-ki-te-kanohi basis whether through site visits or engaging via our technology platform. While we will be operating off a yearly plan there will no doubt be opportunities and challenges that will arise that will require us to pivot and adjust as well as be innovative, mission focused, values driven and entrepreneurial.
We look forward to working with you in 2020.
Mauri Ora!
