YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephen Jennings

lines on the record: 75
first: 2023-11-01
most recent: 2023-11-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I'm trying to understand and I'm trying to help my team to understand the best way to manage and work with people in Africa. I think we thought we knew a lot, but I think there's some things we don't understand as well as we might. So, how do we get the most and create the most opportunity for our African human resource?”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The coast is very diverse, so you can go to where all the people are, Diane Beach, you can go north to Lamu, which is more the Swahili experience, or you can go south and get somewhere absolutely gorgeous and isolated. I had my first dive here a few weeks ago. I'm literally in the water for forty five seconds, I'm still going down, and a seven meter whale shark cruises past me. Four meters away. So the range of experience here that's so accessible is fantastic.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You go probably to the far nor Yeah, Tucana or Samburu area. Yeah. And also you're going to go somewhere very beautiful. You may not see a lot of lions, but you're going to see gorgeous scenery and you're going to see extremely interesting people.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely the cultural experiences and getting again off the beaten track with not a lot of tourism, maybe not a lot of development, very isolated areas where traditional lifestyle is still As it would have been many hundreds of years ago.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're absolutely out of 10. It's a 10, that's for sure A wonderful extremely friendly people, very diverse community, gorgeous environment, lovely climate. But you've got the energy. You drive through the local community. You can see the energy. You can see how every three to six months. It's changing, it's developing. There's aspiration right through society. All of Kenya, yeah, there's huge problems. But all of Kenya thinks that this place is going to change. And they want it to change. Amazing work ethic. And the chance to do big projects that can be transformational that you don't really have in so many places. So a lot of pluses.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Australia is much more competitive, they're comfortable being competitive. Kiwis are very polite and cultural surveys show this. We're not very assertive at all. We find Australians offensive because they're in your face, but they're actually just telling you the truth and they're cutting to the chase and they're getting stuff done. So it's, I think time has shown they've turned out to be a much more dynamic, outward-looking, competitive and vibrant economy. We're very closed. We're one of the most restrictive countries in the world for FDI. But yet we're meant to be friendly, hospitable people. So that full-on competition, that in your face kind of culture, I think it's very different on each side of the Tasman now.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quite a lot, I would say. Prejudging people, not believing in stereotypes, really doing your homework and understanding issues deeply and the history of issues and how history is shaped, how people think and how they behave before you judge them, let alone try and influence them. Resilience, intellectual capacity. Yeah, I learned a lot.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were very strong in a lot of areas. The Kiwi split the atom, the Kiwi was the first person to climb Everest. Economically, we were top three in the world And as I said, things like social services, we were a leader. Yeah, why not be the best? Why not go the extra mile? Why be mediocre with anything? And why think that Kenya can't take the world on? I guess that's a very dominant part of my thinking. Genuinely and 100% believe anything is possible in Kenya. Just how determined you are, how organized you are.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not being babied. It was pretty full on. The girls was pretty full on. They were getting knocked around and bruised, but they were loving it. They were lapping it up.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We went and watched the children from Slums Rugby villages children playing. I find an enormously inspiring. I see the shared joy that that children have of just being supported to go out and kick a ball around. But I see their skill levels. I see their dedication. They're physically tough. They want to train. They want to learn. They're not grumbling. They are physically strong.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was more that when you played rugby, it was competitive. You know, from a very young age in terms of It was very monocultural, so it was very limiting in a way, but it was very competitive. It was serious. You had to train. It didn't matter what the weather conditions were. You were going out and your bare feet and playing and you were going to enjoy it. And you did enjoy it. So yeah, attention to detail, training. It's a paradox, the all blacks, everyone expects them to be the best team in the world and to prepare and play to the nth degree. But we're not like that in everything else we do. It's a weird paradox we've got. So pick some of that up as a child.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was outside. At the end of that pioneering period where you grew up with grandparents who'd lived through the depression and had lived through the war and the values that were engendered in that period were, I was at the tail end of when that was being passed on to people. And at that time, New Zealand was a leader. You felt as in New Zealander we could take anybody on and we could beat them, whether it was sport, economic performance. even areas of innovation that's always been part of me.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This gorgeous pockets everywhere through that absolutely beautiful country, yeah, with lovely, really friendly people and very diverse and specific environments. So, yeah, if you're going there, you should go to the tourist highlights, but go to the off the beaten track and you'll see so many wonderful, beautiful places and you'll meet a lot of very friendly people.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a terrific issue. Auckland has some of the least affordable housing in the world. I think number five last time I worked. Yet only 2% of New Zealand is built upon. It's just a massive paradox. You know, we're meant to be the country that believes in a fair go, but it's hugely hypocritical. If you're a bus driver, you're never going to buy a house. And a huge proportion of your income is going to go and rent. The bigger source of inequality in New Zealand is housing costs, which through regulatory change could be fixed. Just look at Tatu City. We can build a good apartment that anyone would be happy to live in for $35,000. Auckland, that's going to cost you $400,000. And that could be changed in months.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think New Zealand is about, as you know, one of the most analysed countries in every area of reform. So it's not a technical issue again. Every area of reform, the work has been done, it's sitting on the shelf. It comes back to the desire of society for change and the desire of the politicians to implement that change”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some point we put our feet up. You know, probably you have to go back to the 60s and 70s and complacency crept in in many dimensions. And the most obvious one is education. We had objectively one of the best education systems in the world, Kiwis were leading thinkers in many areas. They were successful internationally. But we have one of the worst and most unequal education systems in the OECD today. We have third world levels of educational attainment for sub-sectors of our community”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think fundamentally we'd had quite an entrepreneurial society. People went to New Zealand, indigenous people went to New Zealand. It was an easy place. They had to build their lives. They had to build communities. They had to build infrastructure. They had to be pioneering in nature. They had to be in some sense entrepreneurial. And New Zealand ended up as one of the richest countries in the world with one of the best education and one of the best health systems in the world. It's in the facts.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think countries that have been successful have wave after wave of reform, change, innovation. The change is painful. There's structural adjustment costs. But if you're good at absorbing that, understanding that and moving on to the next round of change, as the Chinese have in some ways, that's a huge strength. If you can't do that, it's a big weakness.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think clearly I'm biased. They think they went extremely well, and you have to judge by the productivity improvement and the likes of telecoms, power, forestry. But these were incredibly poorly managed assets, hugely wasteful, very low levels of innovation, and archaic levels of technology. So, yeah, unleashed a lot of value creation. But I think societies. That can't take the medicine. Generally, don't perform very well. So New Zealanders are still obsessed with the fact that the 80s reforms, there was so many things wrong with them. Notwithstanding the fact that virtually every change has stood the test of time and hasn't been reversed, you see it in the same thatches to blame for so many things that are wrong in the UK. But if it's so bad, just go ahead and reverse everything she did.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's primary, the latter, yeah, and self selection. People you won't go there if you don't like that culture. If you want to go to somewhere more dynamic, more competitive, you'll go to Australia, so that reinforces their culture. I see some hope in M ⁇ ori, Iwi, an indigenous businesses, contrary to what most people would think. They bring a different culture. They bring a more open-minded international culture in many ways. And they are being very successful. That's a small part of our economy. I don't see a lot of silver linings.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, as you know, I'm very negative about New Zealand, and we have very sadly been a huge underperformer on just about every economic and social indicator you can look at. I think there's partly a cultural element. I've thought that for a long time. I used to think that the very high immigration that we had would put some spark and some dynamism back into our society. That hasn't been happening.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think we really understand development at all because if we could predict it, we can predict virtually nothing. Just too complicated, it's too connected with politics. And I think there's a lot of feedback loops and elements of development that we don't understand properly. We certainly can't quantify them. Because the development is happening in such a wide range of settings, from communism, dictatorships through to very liberal systems, and with all different kinds of industrial. On every dimensions, there's a huge range of variables.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a very good question. I think I've read just about everything in development. There's nothing I really like very much. Development is a black box. I don't think there's anything that has much predictive power. There's a lot of explanations whether they be policy settings, location, culture. I think 90% of them are exposed. Very few of them are predictive. Some of them are just tautologies. I really like factualization. It's descriptive more than analytical. It makes it clear that most of the world has been on a very similar development trajectory. It's just not sequenced. Sweden started early, Ethiopia started late, but the nature of the transition and the inevitability of that transition other than very extreme circumstances is kind of the same.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they have got this default setting. Probably nothing's going to change. But in my mind, the bias is massively to change, more change, more growth.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it started in New Zealand working with you because we saw how a country could be changed and we saw how growth could be catalyzed. I guess that opened my mind to change. I have this idea that humans evolved over a period of time where no change happened. So we're wired to think that the world doesn't actually fundamentally change. I think that's like a default cognitive default. But that's actually at variance with the world's experience since the Industrial Revolution. So the experience since the Industrial Revolution is a wider and wider group of countries with a more and more diverse set of institutional settings and styles of government have experienced economic takeoff and very high rates of growth by historical standards. So there's a disconnect between the way people think and what has actually happened. And my default setting is unless you do things really badly, per capita GDP is going to grow. And it's probably going to grow quite quickly. And that's what's happened in most countries in the world. Whereas people look at Africa and they look at the past.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any really good business has alignment. So it has alignment with its capital structure, with its values, with the selection of its, you know, your senior executives. It's no use having a 40-year project and you have some guy who wants to make all his money in the next two years. There's an underlying inconsistency there. And capital structure and shareholder identity is vitally important. It's very easy to bring someone in. They're very excited about the project. They'll help fund this module or that module. They know someone who can help us with something. But the guy's got it, or the woman has got a five-year view. Three years down the line, we've got a problem because he's trying to get an exit or he's trying to get some more cash out of something where it's not optimal in an MPV sense. So being very disciplined about shareholder selection is extremely important.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely a comparative advantage because on every dimension you're trying to find less competitive spaces. So you've definitely got a need to build these very long-term projects. And there's virtually no capital available. So that gives you a competitive edge. It's very hard for somebody else to come in and spend billions of dollars on a 40-year project. It could happen. It's very unlikely.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think there's so many perpetual projects anywhere. There's not so many projects that literally have a 50-year time horizon because there's not really very much 50-year capital. Private PE money is Supposedly seven years, but you have to sell before the seven years. So P is really five years. And people think of that as being long-term capital. DFI money, DFIs say they have long-term capital. They don't have long-term capital at all. It's one of the many myths about DFIs. They do have to generate a return. They do talk about exits. They don't go into 30-year projects. So, yeah, that's very unusual, I think, any”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our business model is about being a pioneer and dealing with issues that probably a lot of other investors don't want to deal with and getting set and getting in the best position on surfing terms whether we want to be exactly where the wave is going to break before anybody else. We also have an asset class where we're trying to line 30, 40 year asset class with a 30-40 year transition. So it made sense for us to come early and to commit very early. But that's not necessarily the case for everybody else”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That very much depends on your product, your time horizon and the effort that you're going to put in. I don't think you can generalize about that.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lot and very quickly. Again, it's an area that we've studied and we've benchmarked against the likes of say Costa Rica, which have similar amenities, but has had a tenfold growth in visitor numbers. So the tourist assets here are amongst the best in the world and they're large scale. But the promotion and the support for infrastructure has been extremely poor. Visitors come to Kenya and they are just completely blown away. But so many people don't understand the quality of that visitor experience. There's a lot of work to be done, and it's not difficult work, and it's work that can be done very quickly to promote and support in some key infrastructure areas, including transport and air transport.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Contributed there are success stories. No flowers are a massive success story. But I think there's more that can be done there as well, yes.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of the RD ideas. So, you know, Brazil developed hybrid strains of grass and crops that were more drought resistant. So you need that R&D element so that your agriculture can adjust to these new climate conditions. And it's a problem that it's hard for the private sector on its own to solve. So ideally you need this interplay with really well managed, scientifically enabled government institutions and the private sector. But most of the heavy lifting has been done by the private sector. So there's some issues where there is a role, a bigger role for the government to play.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Consists of very specialized research and development, which is specific to the crops, climate, seed types, and so forth that are relevant here, as you saw in Brazil. It's partly to do with infrastructure, coal chain, these kinds of issues. So it's the government playing a catalyst role, but at the same time getting out of the private sector. It's a subtle balance, which at the moment Kenya probably isn't particularly good at.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I don't think there's a problem in any of these countries that hasn't either been solved well or poorly many times in other countries. So we know where there's been successful agricultural revolutions more recently in countries like Brazil, for example, where there's this very sophisticated and effective interplay between government institutions, R&D, application of new ideas and the private sector. The government has a very important enabling role if you want to optimize that agricultural transition.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's the same factors that have driven this incredible reduction of birth rates across the world. And as the likes of Charlie Robertson have said, the democratic dividend really kicks in when birth rates fall from three and a half to two and a half. That's when people can save. That's when dependency ratios really start to improve. And Kenya is at the vanguard of that process across this region. So that demographic dividend is really going to kick in over the next 10 years as they move towards 2.25, 2.3 kind of birth rates.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's one of the really amazing things about what's happening in Africa. Birth rates are falling very quickly across the continent, virtually everywhere, with the exception of a few places like Niger. And that decline is accelerating and it's falling faster. The forecasts are revised pretty regularly now.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We know that Switzerland is the most devolved country in the world, and we also know that it's one of the most efficient. And we know that New Zealand and the UK are the most centralised and that model's not exactly working. I don't think there's any right answer, and a lot has to do with culture and experience and skills that are developed. You know, this degree of devolution is quite new here. It's going to take decades for it to really work efficiently. So I think it's much better than the centralized model, vastly better. There's short-term transition costs, but medium-term, I think it's going to be really great. How many counties there should be? I don't know, and I don't think anyone else really knows either.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, the incentive structures are profoundly different. UK and New Zealand have the highest proportion of tax revenues that go to central government. So it creates this huge bias towards development in the capital city and centralisation. So here we have a very devolved constitution. And with that devolution, a lot of revenues are given to the local counties. So the structural reasons for that concentration and the likes of UK don't exist here. And then at just a practical level, you drive around, you see phenomenal development all over the country.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably urbanization because once people move into an urban setting. Those tribal barriers and differences, they gradually melt away. And you can see that, and you're going to see it this week in our office. Most of our staff, they grew up in an urban context. You're not going to distinguish anyone by their tribal background because they're living together, they're working together. So I think through urbanization, those barriers are really... Already eroded massively. The politicians like to stir them up every election cycle, but the underlying integration, I think, is very pronounced. I think it's much less of an issue than the outside world probably thinks.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely, it is. I mean, lack of poor enforcement and definition of property rights is one of the biggest barriers to development in the region.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stigler said all regulation is rationally devised. So the inefficiency in land titling and land offices is very purposely designed to be inefficient and to facilitate corruption and cartels and land offices. So it's a huge source of rents. The Kenyans are in the process of digitalization. They can digitalize the whole thing and create transparency in their sleep probably in six months. It's a question, is there the political will to deal with those cartels and the rent seekers who are benefiting from the existing system?”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the rest of the developing world has been through exactly the same problems. They're really problems of governance. The 99% problems of governance, water, power, municipal transport, these are all governance problems, not technical problems, urban realm. We know that these problems can be addressed. In my view, the governance issues here and in most of sub-Saharan Africa mean that these problems won't be solved for the next 25 years at least. Hence the demand for new modern urban environments.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think I think technology is really economic problems. They're technically easy, but they're politically complicated. Obviously, people try and blame the technology. No, the technology exists. It's developed a long time ago. It's ubiquitous. But there's not the political will to apply that technology. So the city will get more and more congested.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So far, they've done what everybody does, and they've built more and more capacity, and as everybody knows, more and more capacity creates more and more demand. So it achieves nothing. And it's actually clogged up the centre of the city more and more. Clearly there should be congestion charges, as there should be everywhere.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clearly, given the structure of the Kenyan economy, the external shocks have been very unfavourable, so fuel is imported here and grains are imported here. So they've been the big two short-term drivers. And clearly they will unwind now to some extent.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's one of the most lovely countries. I've been to over 100 countries coming from New Zealand. I know what a beautiful country is. You have incredible diversity of environmental amenities here. So amazing national parks, but very diverse from desert-like areas to Masaimara. You have incredible coastline. You have incredible cultural diversity.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll check their prior work in a lot of detail. And we'll spend a lot of time with them and we'll put them in a lot of situations without them actually knowing that we're deliberately doing that to see how they will react, how they will react with our local staff or it might be a dinner after a long day when they think it's time to relax. We're actually looking to see how they interact with our clients. Do they listen? Are they respectful? Are they really interested or are they just going through the motions? So a lot of the recruitment information comes away from the interview process. How do they behave when you're actually negotiating their deal? Are they timely? Are they honest? Do they play games? Do they change their position? So we rely on a lot of those kind of data points.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're not, you know, interviews. It's pretty well documented. Interviews are a very inaccurate way of selecting and evaluating people.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to spend a lot of time. You have to spend a lot of your time identifying those people. Checking those people, persuading those people, and integrating those people. It's very easy to hire some very senior development manager, but it's very hard to find the right person who's going to be committed to your project, who will integrate your team and train local professionals. So it takes a lot of time and a lot of judgment.”
2023-11-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Stephen Jennings on Building New Cities · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source