WOW (as in omg), page-19

I'm not a WOW shareholder (thankfully) but I need to vent anyway. Sorry in advance.

Even without the benefit of hindsight, anyone with an eye for history could see that the opportunity (anyone's opportunity) to thwart the Bunnings juggernaut was to beat them to BBC Hardware, which was the crucial east coast expansion. After that, with Wesfarmers balance sheet behind them, taking them on head to head was delusional.

But in many ways the Masters debacle sums up almost everything that's wrong with Boards and senior management in Australia - in public companies and the Bureaucracy.

The culture of expecting to be (and then actually BEING) fully remunerated and bonused in the face of abject failure will destine us all to failure I'm afraid.

If anything, if you can imagine it, the problem is even bigger in all layers of Government. Does anyone really think that "heads will roll" at the ABS? And what about the beautiful line that "the gunman had rights too" that we heard at the Lindt Cafe inquiry? Any repercussions do you reckon?

We've just become unable or unwilling to say to someone that they didn't do the job that they said they were capable of doing and sending them off without a job or pay packet as a result.

Instead we accept mediocrity as an acceptable performance outcome - and as a consequence undervalue true accomplishment.

Let's hope that WOW can somehow get a clear strategy to fight on the front that was always going to be the real fight - Aldi, Costco etc.