David Irving - Changing Gears: How to Take Your Kiwi Business From the Kitchen Table to the Board Room

Changing Gears is the essential introduction to growing your Kiwi business. Sharing the success stories of real New Zealand companies, the book gives New Zealand owner-managers tried and trusted tips for driving growth and profitability. The authors tackle key questions: What are the business models and financial drivers in your company? Can you become a leader who can see the future for your business? How do you build a team, share information and delegate effectively? And how do you pursue opportunities to make your business bigger and better?

Drawing on their own business careers, international research, and experience coaching owner-managers in the successful ICEHOUSE programme, the authors celebrate the vision and tenacity of New Zealands owner-managers and provide you with the tools for taking your business from the kitchen table to the board room.

DAVID IRVING is the former chief executive of Heinz Watties Australasia, co-founder of The ICEHOUSE and honorary professor of enterprise and management at the University of Auckland Business School. DARL KLB is associate professor at the University of Auckland Business School where he focuses on the management of social and technical communication in organisations. DEBORAH SHEPHERD teaches change management, innovation and professional development at the University of Auckland Business School and has been involved in The ICEHOUSE programmes since their inception. CHRISTINE WOODS teaches entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Auckland Business School and helped establish the spark* entrepreneurship challenge.

HOW TO TAKE YOUR KIWI BUSINESS FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE TO THE BOARD ROOM

DAVID IRVING

Co-founder, The ICEHOUSE and honorary professor,
University of Auckland Business School

DARL KOLB (EDITOR)

University of Auckland Business School

DEBORAH SHEPHERD

University of Auckland Business School

CHRISTINE WOODS

University of Auckland Business School

First published 2009
This ebook edition 2013

Auckland University Press
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland 1142
New Zealand
www.press.auckland.ac.nz

David Irving, Darl Kolb, Deborah Shepherd and Christine Woods

eISBN 978 1 86940 666 0

National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Changing gears : how to take your Kiwi business from the kitchen
table to the board room / David Irving [et al.].
Includes index.
eISBN 978-1-86940-666-0
1. Business planningNew Zealand. 2. Small businessGrowth.
3. Small businessManagement. I. Irving, David, 1946
658.4012dc 22

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study,
research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may
be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher.

Cover design: Keely OShannessy

This book owes its existence to David Irvings vision, drive and longing to tell the world (or at least New Zealand) about our unsung hero: the owner-manager. Without Davids passion for developing the skills of the owner-manager in New Zealand, coupled with his extraordinary business savvy and acumen, and his personal empathy, insights and wisdom, this project would never have succeeded. We thank David for all he has contributed to this book and to owner-managers over the years.

Sharing Davids respect and admiration for the many owner-managers we have met over the years, as co-authors we would like to acknowledge all the owner-managers who have taught us so much. Your incredible business successes are an inspiration. We would like to particularly thank the owner-managers and their companies who are featured in this book. Your honesty brings our thoughts to life much better than our words could ever do. Thanks to you and your staff for helping others learn from your experiences.

As participants on The ICEHOUSE owner-manager programmes (OMP) know, Deborah Shepherd and Christine Woods have designed an incredibly successful learning journey that they deliver with style and grace. It is truly wonderful to be part of the facilitation team, which includes many other facilitators and presenters, all of whom bring such knowledge and enthusiasm to The ICEHOUSE programmes. Thanks to all our colleagues and peers for their support throughout this project. A special mention should also go to our OMP colleagues Raewyn, Liz, Leith, Richard, Val, Simon and Jo, and to our Agri-business colleagues, Nicola and Bill. And thanks to Julia Brannigan, who helped capture our creativity during the early stages of the writing process.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the following organisations who over the years have supported New Zealands owner-managers to take up the challenge of changing gears: Bank of New Zealand; Boston Consulting Group; Carter Holt Harvey; Chapman Tripp; Deloitte; Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern Region); Ernst & Young; Hewlett Packard; Microsoft; Minter Ellison Rudds & Watts; Telecom; and the University of Auckland Business School.

Darl Kolb (editor)

Back in 2000, the Knowledge Wave conference and think-tank told us the future was in high-tech start-ups. Globalisation meant that we had to attract multinationals and then keep them here. Within New Zealand we were failing to grow our firms to a big enough size to compete globally.

But what stirred me was the question, What is New Zealand doing to recognise and enable better performance from its home-grown small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)? The irony was that the multinationals decide for themselves where they want to live, but our SMEs were here and werent going anywhere. So, why not give them some attention?

New Zealand has around 3500 businesses with annual revenues between $10 million and $150 million, collectively generating around $120 billion in revenues each year, which is around one-third of our national economic revenue and several times the size of our publicly listed markets.

It was clear to me then as it is now that, although larger organisations are a necessary and valuable part of our economic landscape, we needed to focus on the SME if we were to improve our economic performance and way of life. The simple insight that came to me was that, while there were many managers in a corporate, only one person really stood out in an SME the owner-manager. The term owner-manager is not very sexy. Indeed, the formerly questionable and now exalted word entrepreneur gets lots of positive media attention, but who wants to grow up to be an owner-manager? Well, the truth is, coming from a large corporate background, I found these owner-managers to be the understated heroes of New Zealand. They were managers (the boring bit of the term), but they were also owners, which means they have money in the game as well as risk, vision, determination and tenacity. In short, there is a big difference between a manager and an owner-manager, and that difference intrigued me no end.

For my part, as a corporate manager (CEO of Heinz Watties), I had been lucky enough to attend an eight-week senior executive programme at Stanford University Business School in the USA. But, where was the equivalent for the SME owner-manager? Interestingly, I could find little anywhere in the world, but importantly I couldnt find anything in New Zealand, where it was needed. Stop and think about it for a moment our university courses, and most business books that go with them, are from or for the world of the corporates. Yet, the predominant New Zealand need for growth is in the many thousands of small- and medium-sized enterprises. We train for big, yet must begin from small.