In reality, though, their effects are already being felt in New Zealand, and according to MYOB country manager Ingrid Cronin-Knight, businesses will see fundamental change in the next two decades.

“In ten to twenty years’ time, the basics of business will be the same. A business will still be designed to serve a customer, you’ll need to balance the books to ensure you have enough cashflow to cover expenses, and keep records of what you do.

Everything else – how you find and interact with that customer, the products and services you sell them, how you transact and even the nature of money – will all change.

Even with significant change so close, it’s not surprising most business operators aren’t spending a lot of time keeping up with the latest technology.

With so much to be across when you’re running a business, unless it’s a real passion or they depend on it for their business, the majority of business operators don’t devote a lot of time to monitoring the trends that will affect them, even in the next two or three years’ time.

However, a number of really transformative technologies are probably already changing the way they do business – it’s just that they are largely happening ‘under the hood’.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), in its current sense, is a good example. As a technology provider, MYOB’s focus has been to introduce more automation in business management and accounting software – to remove the boring bits and improve the overall experience.

What that’s done is given business better insights to enable them to make smarter decisions, including near real-time feedback into the fundamentals of their business such as cashflow and key cost centres like payroll.

But that’s just the start of what AI will be able to achieve for business, which despite some of the common misapprehensions, could make businesses ‘more human’.

When you look at the algorithms of machine learning and AI together, what you are going to see is AI playing a massive role in the customer experience. From how you target your customers and build an understanding of what they need – even how they are feeling at any particular point in time – to how you communicate with your customers, using chatbots or virtual assistants, your business will be more responsive, more efficient and more directly connected to individual customers’ preferences.

That doesn’t mean humans are ripe for replacement. In fact, based on current trends, the opposite is likely to be the case.

Take the accounting industry for example. MYOB has spent the last two decades streamlining and automating tasks routinely performed by accountants and bookkeepers. But while many tasks have been automated, demands for creative, advisory and decision-making skills have grown.

In fact, jobs have never been more secure. According to research conducted by AlphaBeta, the rate of involuntary job loss 20 years ago sat at about 4.2 percent. Now it’s 2.6 percent.

What it shows is that transformative technology is not only creating new jobs, it’s also fundamentally changing the nature of existing roles. So, we need to ensure that we train our people to make an impact in those areas. Whilst there’s fear and uncertainty for many people, it’s really about re-flavouring the current roles to be focused on the things that make people happier and removing the drudgery from what they do.

Managing the change and ensuring everyone has the opportunity to flourish in the new environment will take real leadership, and an awareness of the impact technology can have on the way people work.

As anyone with a smartphone knows, more technology doesn’t necessarily lead to better wellbeing.

The complexity that’s going on in the workplace is going far beyond anything experienced before – and that’s stretching our abilities, particularly for business leaders. We need to invest in the training of our leaders – how they manage flexible work forces, how they adapt to technology and still get the best out of their people.

That complexity is only increased by growing diversity – particularly generational – in the workforce.

We currently have four generations working together, with different styles, expectations and familiarity with technology.

At MYOB, we’re strong champions of diversity. Having differing voices in the room means better, more inclusive decision-making, and it means you are more likely to be able to recognise the needs of a diverse range of customers. But more viewpoints can make it harder to make the right decision for your business – and providing the tools to make that decision may be something technology helps with as well.

As the MYOB Business Monitor survey highlighted, understanding which technologies may affect your business, and in particular where your industry may be ripe for disruption, can be a confusing, even daunting task for business operators.

MYOB’s own approach is to use trajectory-based planning – to look at where trends are likely to go and ensure the business invests in resources and competencies to meet the stages on those paths. However, for smaller businesses, trying to stay across every trend is impossible.

My advice is to pick the one or two technologies that will help your business the most. There’s so much choice, but not every technology offering is suitable for your business.

It will also pay to remain focused on the fundamentals, such as keeping the customer at the heart of all that you do, which will continue to drive businesses in the decades to come.

We are social beings, so we will still want to interact with each other – we’ll want to have experiences, enjoy great service, share and interact, probably still face-to-face. So many of the things that are the hallmarks of great businesses today will not change, they’ll just be underpinned, made easier or better by transformative technology.”

For further research insights or to find out how MYOB can help your business succeed, visit www.myob.com/nz.

• Read part one in this series with Metia Interactive founder Maru Nihoniho here, part two with Banqer co-founder Kendall Flutey here, part three with Trade Me’s Diana Minnee here and part four with Beyond’s Jessica Manins here.

Investing. It can conjure up images of men in suits, skyscrapers and New York, so let’s consider the opposite of that: a woman with a baby on her hip, co-working spaces and, let’s say, Wellington.

Great, we’ve described start-up hero, Sharesies. The investment app founded by a group of friends has smashed ceilings, walls, barriers and expectations after bursting forth from the Kiwibank Fintech Accelerator in 2017.

Co-founders Brooke Anderson and Sonya Williams talk enthusiastically about making investing easy, and it’s easy to see how these two have changed the fintech game. By avoiding jargon-laden industry phrases and using inclusive, playful communication to tell their story and educate Kiwis about their finances, it is safe to say they have created a movement.

The duo, alongside four other founders, have amplified their beliefs and values in such a way that it has translated into a company that balances purpose with profit. As of April, Sharesies investment platform was the first financial company nationally to qualify for the B Corp certification, joining just 22 other New Zealand B Corp certified businesses. These companies meet the highest standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability.

As two former Kiwibank employees, Anderson and Williams worked with each other and flirted with the idea of something bigger.  

“I felt like my whole career was aimed towards owning my own business, and I honestly can’t say what planted to seed. It was like making little choices and decisions to get me closer to that,” Williams says.

 Anderson, however, had already experimented with ideas and starting businesses while still at school.

“I knew from school that owning my own business was what I wanted to do, and I needed a super fascinating job to help me learn – you don’t know what you don’t know.  At the time, for various reasons, I was hustling for money, but I never compromised on opportunities or where I wanted to go. I met Paul Brock (former Kiwibank CEO) and discovered he had a marketing background but worked in finance, I knew then that this is what I wanted to do.”

When the Kiwibank FinTech Accelerator provided the opportunity to satisfy their curiosity and learn and build together, as a team, the prospect of such a significant change didn’t even cross their mind.  Williams had moved from Xero to Kiwibank, where she learned about money and the customer, and said she had to follow her gut instinct. 

“I knew I couldn’t let other people’s version of what’s possible guide mine. I knew I had to be myself, do the work and see what happens. If you’ve got an inkling, see it through.”

Life is short, time is the only thing you can’t buy. Try to use that perspective and think, ‘Why wouldn’t I want to use my time the best way I can?’ I wish we’d started this earlier, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.

As a mentor to young social entrepreneurs for the Live the Dream programme, Anderson was learning and supporting social enterprises, but was itching for more, so started taking design-thinking courses.

“I loved working with purpose-driven people and learned so much at Kiwibank, you’re working with people who want to make a difference,” Anderson says. “That’s what made it easy to start Sharesies – there was a commonality. We wanted to have an impact on lives and align the business with our values. It would be hard to be this passionate if we left gaps.”

As Sharesies’ growth accelerated, Anderson was balancing a house renovation, getting married and having a baby, alongside her role as CEO of an organisation that was smashing targets.

“After I had my first baby, Elle, I experienced some complex emotions I wasn’t prepared for. I wasn’t sure where I should be spending my time. It impacted me, and I thought, ‘Is my brain working?’

“I had an awesome support in [husband] Leighton and the Sharesies wh?nau, and I realised, okay, it’s cool, it’s just hormones and sleep deprivation – it’s not your time anymore, it is shared with someone else.”

A couple of years on, Williams said the experience and leap of faith had changed her life, and she finally feels herself.

“You just have to get over yourself and ask questions and tear things down, seeing things differently or from your context lead to great things and innovation, and that is a special skill — value what you bring to the table. Listen to yourself and when that one voice telling you to do something is the loudest, do it.  I was shit scared of public speaking; now it doesn’t even bother me,” Williams says.

“Life is short, time is the only thing you can’t buy. Try to use that perspective and think, ‘Why wouldn’t I want to use my time the best way I can?’ I wish we’d started this earlier, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

• Read part one in this series with Metia Interactive founder Maru Nihoniho here, part two with Banqer co-founder Kendall Flutey here and part three with Trade Me’s Diana Minnee here.

‘Give less fucks’ is an approach Jessica Manins has carefully cultivated after years of trying to be everything to everyone. This subtle art is not something that comes easily to a self-confessed people’s person, who has carved out a career creating meaningful customer strategies for some of New Zealand’s most successful brands. Instead, it was developed after both crashing through and leap-frogging hurdles that taught hard lessons on sailing the tide of change.  

This refreshing and candid approach to tackling what life throws at you is not unique in the business world and, in fact, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson and the Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck by Sarah Knight have both topped best seller’s lists across the globe.

It is in this spirit that Manins, the former director of PROJECTR, has embraced her latest venture with a large, extra-loaded side order of fun. She recently co-founded (and is CEO of) social gaming VR studio, Beyond, and playfulness is evident in every aspect of the brand.

“I have finally discovered that it is so important to keep the spirit of who you are, that has been my biggest learning and transformation on this journey,” Manins says.

The journey she speaks of is bound in the emerging tech scene she waltzed into after meeting the founders of StarNow at an audition when she was an actress. With a flair for bringing other people’s stories to life, she quickly found her feet at the Kiwi start-up success story and was later named StarNow’s chief customer officer.

Like many other founders before her, she felt the urge to jump into the unknown and immerse herself in something she loved and could shape from scratch. Queue the next move to BizDojo, where she led the pioneering Collider programme in Wellington.

Not one to do things by halves and already familiar with the uncharted territory, she immersed herself in the VR, AR and MR space, using her polished people and PR skills to unite thinking and diversity of thought in a relatively new space.

It was during this time she experienced some of the hardest lessons in her career.

“I think up until this point I hadn’t been truly challenged, and I felt real loneliness, and hard times, a lack of sleep – waking every two hours and going to work, and I was leading a team, and learning a new work environment and the relationships come with that. Everything isn’t quite what it seems on the outside; I didn’t know how I was going to pay myself and suddenly I’m putting myself out there – my personal brand, not someone else’s.

“I also had people saying, ‘Who are you why do you think you’re qualified to be doing this?’ and things like, ‘I’ve been in the industry X number of years, who do you think you are?’ That was hard.”

While juggling a new role in the VR and AR industry and the torrent of people questioning her credentials, she also had to make time for a scenario she had not prepared for or was even considering as she mapped a new course.

“I’ve always thought I am a trusting person and that trusting is a good thing, but you know when you get that gut feeling when you know something’s not quite right, and you don’t listen to it – that’s gotten me into some bad situations.

“There are [friends] going, ‘Are you sure?’ And then you’re justifying things. It took me to some pretty dark times. You’ve made promises, and you don’t want to break them, and you’re loyal, so you put up with a horrific situation. I put up with it for way too long and later when you reflect, you go, ‘wow I let that happen, I thought I was a smart person?’ “

Since then, she has relied on her support network and Leading Ladies Wellington, the peer mentoring group she co-created with a group of other women in business looking for guidance, honesty and feedback. Seeking a group that would provide all these things was a challenge, and like most problem solvers, she simply created one herself. Three years on, the initiative has women all across Wellington sharing experiences, offering support and facilitating learning sessions.

 “Understand your why. I’ve always been values and purpose-driven – it’s really important to me,” Manins says. “For ten years, my why was helping others succeed and then I realised it wasn’t working for me anymore and I wasn’t getting happiness. I needed to change and look at myself and what I wanted.

“It’s okay to change your why. You don’t have to have the same why your whole career. I want to bring joy to people, create fun products and content that makes people laugh. Life got very serious; my background was acting and comedy and, and so I decided last year that I needed to have more fun.”

• Read part one in this series with Metia Interactive founder Maru Nihoniho here and part two with Banqer co-founder Kendall Flutey here.  

If you work in agile, most would assume you’re pretty adaptable to change. With 15 years of experience in agile and lean practices under her belt, Diana Minnee is an expert at things like frameworks, methodologies and learning mindsets. She even has the word ‘Sisu’ tattooed on her wrist – a Finnish concept that has no English equivalent, but means grit, bravery and resilience.

So, how does the head of delivery at Trade Me apply the thinking that keeps some of New Zealand’s leading organisations ticking to her own evolving life journey?

Last year, Minnee wrote a candid blog about her life and why she was proud to look back on the things she had achieved. She reflected on how when she was months away from turning 17, she discovered she was pregnant.

Already seven months into her unplanned pregnancy, the shock rippled through Minnee, her boyfriend, their parents and the community.

“Upon letting my parents know, my step mother’s first response was, ‘How am I ever going to show my face to my friends now? I’m so ashamed of you! You have ruined your life.’ My father was silent, and I watched him grey before my eyes,” she says.

Minnee’s career choices from this point forward stem from her belief that, “Nothing is predetermined, success looks different for everyone, and the opinion you have of yourself is more important than other people’s views of you”.

Keeping this belief firm to her heart, Minnee found shift work as a waitress in a pub while raising her daughter in a new town with her first husband. As her confidence soared, she felt a desire to prove herself to the people who told her she’d ruined her life.

Armed with an incredible thirst to learn and give the middle finger, she zigzagged from shop assistant, to selling newspaper ads, to working in an art gallery, to owning her own salon. This wealth of knowledge in people, systems, marketing and operations has helped her carve a niche in today’s fast-paced tech industry today.

But while working as a salon owner, Minnee was hit by a storm of personal and professional challenges: she had a miscarriage, separated from her husband and lost her business due to fraudulent activity committed by a trusted employee in the space of a few months.

“Personally, death, poverty, divorce and a lack of family support are all as bad as they say they are. The lessons from these have meant I am ultimately stronger for it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” Minnee says.

“We shouldn’t need to be as strong and resilient as these things force us to become, and in many ways, this has been to the detriment of closeness to others, sharing the load, and admitting when I need support.

“Outside of these things, though, the hardest lesson I have learnt is being burned badly by people you trust. I mean big, harrowing, take-five-years-to-recover kind of throw you under the bus type of burn here. It is hard not to let that change your perspective from trusting first unless proven otherwise, to being closed off and having people earn your trust. I believe people are generally not out to be assholes to you, and thinking the best of them is always a place I go to first. There have been times when that has been very hard to maintain, but doing what is right is better than doing what is easy.”

For Minnee, it is easy to explain where she is now and she believes it is down to an intentional push to embrace a new phase in her personal life, as well as where she wanted to be professionally.

“My life has been filled with some hard yards, a tough road in many ways to get to what I would define as success. The last five years have been purposeful when it comes to my career, as some of the best advice I received about then was from the Chair of the Board at SilverStripe [where I had been since 2010] when he told me the fastest way of getting where I wanted was a straight line. I made a plan of what I wanted to do and be, and I have been true to that path since then.”

Minnee explains what delivery means to her and how this can be considered from a personal perspective – particularly if you’re going through a period of change or making intentional decisions that are aimed at leading you somewhere.

“People often wonder what delivery means ­– my seven-year-old niece asked if I was responsible for delivering all of the things that were sold on Trade Me to the people who bought them, and she was very disappointed with my real job when I explained.

“Delivery is about how we do our best work together in a safe way, smooth our flow through the end-to-end delivery life cycle, and consistently measure our results to know what’s adding value. This may be looking at processes, tools, team psychology, motivating factors, organisational structure or culture, and how it all relates to optimising our environment to create great things efficiently.”

Finding the right balance is something she has strived for and practiced daily after remarrying and having another child not long after turning 40, something she believes comes down to compromises and disclaimers.

“Both my husband and I are in senior careers that neither of us wanted to pause. It was not something I had considered very seriously until that moment, so we had to come to some very specific terms around how we could still sustain my career growth expectations while growing our family,” Minnee says.

“It’s been a hard road, one that takes discipline to do in a way that keeps everyone happy and healthy. I don’t know if I would recommend it to everyone, but luckily our personality types and lifestyle makes it work somehow.

“It’s difficult to do without someone compromising something fundamental to them, but we manage. All of this ‘women can have a career, and a family’ messaging should at least come with a disclaimer. It’s challenging, it’s constant, it’s expensive, but at least for us, it’s worth it.”

• Read part one in this series with Metia Interactive founder Maru Nihoniho here. 

Accountant and software developer Kendall Flutey is the co-founder and CEO of Banqer, an online education platform teaching financial literacy and business smarts to kids in classrooms across Aotearoa. She is also no stranger to change. 

The Kiwibank 2019 Young New Zealand of the Year winner has forged a reputation as someone who can brighten a room with her limitless passion for both tech and education in Aotearoa.

The visionary Kiwi’s story is embedded in transformation – it is something she talks about candidly about at events and conferences – and she even sold her corporate wardrobe when she left one of the big four companies, KPMG, to traverse the entrepreneurial path.  

While shedding a corporate identity is one thing, a change in Flutey’s subconscious prompted her to change the path she was going down.  

“If I Iook back five years, I can say with certainty that I was narrow-minded,” she says. “My beliefs were rooted in success and compensation. I didn’t know who I was on a fundamental level, and I started to realise that if I didn’t change, these negative traits would have grown.”

Sometimes I still get jealous and think the grass is greener and wonder if it would be easier to get a 9-till-5 job and go for work drinks and go travelling, but I want to be more complete as who I am and not let the ghost of what success looks like linger.

For Flutey, she says her primary focus at the time was possessions and status.

“It wasn’t an ‘A-ha moment’ I often hear some people talk about, it was a slow undoing on my practiced and embedded belief system,” she says. “I was so unhappy. I was working at KPMG, and I looked around and thought, ‘Okay, maybe this is it.’ I looked at the milestones ahead, and I knew I didn’t want it – this doesn’t look or feel like happiness to me – this version of success will never bring me happiness.

“It was overwhelming: the stress and anxiety, alongside unhappiness. I had invested so much in myself, and now I was questioning it. I know there must have been excitement in there somewhere at the prospect of trying something new, but all I remember is the fear. It felt like a midlife crisis; it really did feel that dramatic.

“I would have still been a depressed accountant in years to come, I just knew this was the right time to change. It’s like we [society] have this linear view of career progression, and I certainly had that.”

Flutey knew she wanted to build and to design tech. Once she’d enrolled at New Zealand’s leading coding school, Enspiral Dev Academy, she said she could feel the weight lifting. While training to be a software developer at the 15-week boot camp, she did an exercise to explore what made her happy and decided to swim with the current instead of fighting against it.

This exploration led her to sell 90 percent of her stuff (she is, after all, a self-confessed all-or-nothing person) and dedicate everything to being the kind of person she wanted to be.

“I feel like moving into tech and creating Banqer was fortuitous timing and luck, but having the courage to listen to myself and knowing that I find immense fulfilment in helping others and enriching their lives brings a great deal of satisfaction to me,” Flutey says.

“Sometimes I still get jealous and think the grass is greener and wonder if it would be easier to get a 9-till-5 job and go for work drinks and go travelling, but I want to be more complete as who I am and not let the ghost of what success looks like linger.”

Maru Nihoniho remembers the moment she was prepared to throw it all in on her career. She was sitting in a bland hotel room in San Francisco, scanning a menu for room service. As she surveyed the empty words on the list, her heart sank, tears fell with abandon and a mountain of emotions collided in her head.  She was running on empty, emotionally, physically and financially, her and her husband’s credit cards were maxed out, and funding was further away than she could imagine. 

“I felt so sad, it hit me all at once. I felt like I was wasting my time, my money and all I could think was ‘this is such a stupid idea’ and that I had failed. The tears kept falling, and it was at that moment that I thought I couldn’t go on and couldn’t do this anymore.”

The feeling remained until she boarded her flight back to New Zealand. Her inner critic screamed louder as the journey progressed, ‘You should have stayed at school’ and ‘You should have stayed at work’.

“Maybe the teachers were right; maybe I should just go back to waitressing even if it isn’t my passion. I was lonely and sad, I felt guilty about eating up our savings and leaving my husband to run a business and take care of our children,” Nihoniho says. “These feelings were bombarding me. It was so hard. But, somewhere at this moment, I found the strength to change. I knew I had to change my thinking and my approach to make this succeed.”

Her persistence paid off. By the time she landed, she had the idea for the game that would become the first product she had gained investment in.

That was more than 15 years ago, and since then Nihoniho has gone on to become one of the foremost founders and developers in the New Zealand gaming industry, leading the way with her pioneering and award-winning company Metia Interactive. In addition to creating games that support young people with their mental health, she is on a mission to create games that educate, inspire and change the world.

These games include SPARX, an interactive game which was designed to help rangatahi (youth) with depression, won the 2011 United National World Summit Awards and the 2013 Unesco Netexplo Award in 2013, and T?karo, which aims to get more young people into STEM. 

 In 2016, Nihoniho was honoured with a New Zealand Order of Merit and later named in the Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech 2018 and M?ori Entrepreneur of the Year 2018.

Nihoniho left school during sixth form, much to the disappointment of her mother and teachers who implored her to stick it out and told her it’s hard for women, but even harder for M?ori women. Despite this, she jumped at every opportunity a 16-year-old could grab, even working a short-lived stint helping a friend on the milk run.

While volunteering in an op-shop, she discovered a passion for helping people, and this kicked off a 14-year stint in hospitality, which culminated in eventually owning a restaurant with her husband. Life was comfortable: a stable career, a beautiful home, a growing family. But underneath the surface, a familiar itchiness was simmering.

“It didn’t take me very long to figure out what was bothering me, I knew it was games and gaming. I had been playing since I was a kid and that’s how I knew; it was driving my curiosity and desire to explore,” Nihoniho says. “The decision happened overnight, and I knew it was time for a change. I had to do something about it – I didn’t want to be a waitress all my life.”

This instant change in mindset can be a gift for some people, but for others, it is a shock to the system, including Maru’s husband, who had to make adjustments to both work and family life to support and accommodate Maru’s return to school and trips overseas to conferences and other industry events.

‘Without the support of my wh?nau, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. I had to step away from the business and leave it to him ­– it was a lot of task management, and it was hard.”

Her complete dedication and all-or-nothing approach enabled her to navigate the change she was experiencing, including the constant learning curve that comes with building gaming prototypes.

With little experience in pitching or investment, her ideas remained on paper and didn’t gain the traction she was hoping for until the moment in the hotel room changed her outlook on what she’d given up, and what she had achieved.

“Wahine were not taken seriously when I started out in the industry. It was a tough environment, there was not enough support, education, information or even respect,” Nihoniho  says. “It’s better now, but there is still work to be done. I experienced gender bias and sexism, and I was told ‘girls don’t make games,’ but I dealt with it, and I didn’t give a shit. Comments like that just didn’t compute, as all the people I played with were girls.”

Nihoniho says she is still working with and for people, much like she did in hospitality, but she is communicating differently.

“I found my ‘this is it’ – this is what I was looking for. For every milestone I’d hit in my previous life, I was thinking, is this it? Now I’m at this point, and it’s meant to be.”

Keep an eye out for the rest of this series in the coming weeks, featuring Banqer’s Kendall Flutey, Beyond’s Jessica Manins, Sharesies’ Brooke Anderson and Sonya Williams and Trade Me’s Diana Minnee.