Remember what they took from you.<\/p>\n
Prime minister Christopher Luxon has long tried to resist parliament\u2019s personality-killing pressures and stay true to the business executive at the centre of his organisational chart. He\u2019s persisted with corporate jargon<\/a> over the increasingly desperate screams of his media advisers, routinely telling interviewers he\u2019s focused on operationalising our core competencies. But on Wednesday, the Herald revealed that politics had finally got the best of National\u2019s leader, reporting that the government has quietly killed its quarterly action plans for the public service<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The move would have been a devastating blow to Luxon. As the former chief executive of the airline Air New Zealand, there\u2019s nothing he loves more than quarterly plans, strategic growth summaries or indeed KPIs. Killing off quarterly plans is tantamount to killing Luxon himself. If he\u2019s ever to recover the pieces of his broken mojo, he\u2019ll need to execute a quarterly action plan.<\/p>\n Goal one: Live your mojo<\/p>\n Start with the big rocks. Due primarily to a relentless<\/a> bullying<\/a> campaign<\/a> from The Spinoff\u2019s Toby Manhire, Luxon has stopped saying mojo. It\u2019s hard to recover your mojo when you\u2019re afraid of even using the word. Luxon needs to stop saying nojo to mojo if he\u2019s to growjo out of this lowjo.<\/p>\n Support required: Regular self-affirmations. Mojo nojo nomo.<\/p>\n Goal two: Massage the numbers<\/p>\n Whenever the PM looks like regaining confidence, a breaking news banner appears saying \u201cno one likes you\u201d. The media has taken no small joy in reporting Luxon\u2019s flatlining preferred prime minister numbers<\/a> and plunging approval rating<\/a>. It\u2019s hard to supercharge growth while constantly battling against the headwinds of your nation\u2019s negative mindset. Sunsetting polling, approval ratings or indeed measurable outcomes is the first action item in getting back on track.\u00a0<\/p>\n Support required: Military action against The Post\/Freshwater Strategy.<\/p>\n Goal three: Squash the competition<\/p>\n If it\u2019s not the polls betraying you, it\u2019s your so-called \u201ctop ministers and government coalition partners\u201d. Luxon has been undermined by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who has accused him of sabotaging the economy<\/a> by introducing tax cuts with the support of New Zealand First. Act keeps undercutting the story the government is telling to customers<\/a> by boasting about saving billions on pay equity or reining in the \u201cwoke Waitangi Tribunal\u201d. Worst of all, according to Stuff\u2019s Andrea Vance, housing minister Chris Bishop has been plotting a strategic acquisition of the prime ministership<\/a>. When faced with this organisational misalignment, the most game-changing manoeuvre is to engage in a full c-suite restructure.<\/p>\n Support required: Sign-off from Erica Stanford.<\/p>\n Goal four: Know your customers<\/p>\n As the saying goes, \u201che waka eke noa\u201d, and now the waka has been purged, it should be smooth sailing ahead. But even the best company needs to move in lockstep with the market. The time for talking is after the client speaks and Luxon has already engaged in some active listening, taking on board the concerns of a diverse array of villa owners on housing density<\/a>. A day off-site talking to everyday New Zealanders in the Koru Lounge should further attune him to demand trends, preferably followed by a short cruise spent workshopping with Chuck and Mary<\/a>.<\/p>\n Support required: A small favour from some former colleagues in the aviation industry.<\/p>\n Now the big rocks are rolling, displacing small rocks as they hurtle down the hill and crash headlong through the negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking<\/a> barriers to supercharged growth. A new All Blacks coach can\u2019t be far away. The art deco community can\u2019t stay angry for long<\/a>. It\u2019s time for the prime minister to take his original mission statement to market. With restored quarterly plans and mojo, there\u2019s no doubt he\u2019ll ace his performance appraisal on November 7.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prime minister has lost his passion for plans. He needs a plan to restore his plan passion.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[44152,11508,492,112585,42,70226,43,135,40,38,41,39,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-305738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-chris-hipkins","9":"tag-christopher-luxon","10":"tag-comments-enabled","11":"tag-election-2026","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-mojo","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-winston-peters"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}We\u2019re all working for Chuck and Mary.
\nGoal five: Go to market<\/p>\n