The plan to make Zespri Gold a prestigious brand, particularly in parts of Asia, wasn't necessarily a board initiative, writes Tony Marks. File photo / supplied
The plan to make Zespri Gold a prestigious brand, particularly in parts of Asia, wasn't necessarily a board initiative, writes Tony Marks. File photo / supplied
Opinion
COMMENT
I think Ron Ainsbury "Why does NZ accept second best in business?" (NZ Herald, February 4) has aimed his criticism at the wrong target.
He makes an assumption that better boards would magically result in better business decisions and outcomes. This misses the point in that inmany (most?) companies, the board is there to endorse strategy and challenge execution. Which is great if the strategies are sound and the executive team and their acolytes are capable or have the resources to implement.
My experience, which crosses numerous industries, is that endorsing the strategy, any strategy, by the board is the easy bit. Most strategies fail to give the desired or predicted results because the executive quickly run out of the three resources they can bring to bear: people, time and money.
Unless the organisation has a very defined focus and aligns its limited resources to achieve a few simple goals, everyone is doomed to disappointment.
During my time at Air New Zealand, we eventually defined a few basic goals for the international airline. Recapture the New Zealand market ( Airpoints invented, by the way, the board rejected it first time up); maintain the market share and profitability of the Japanese routes, increase business travel (strip out economy seats and replace with business class); and seek to join an alliance (several years of negotiation to join Star).
None of these strategic requirements emanated from the board, and I would not have expected them to, but all were challenged and then endorsed. The board's role was largely to ensure all the options had been canvassed.
Management made the call as to what to put forward. How can it be otherwise when most boards meet infrequently and are relatively unfamiliar with the minutiae of the business?
I would agree, however, that having greater diversity of sex and age on a board would help as would my, so far ignored, plea for some sales and marketing experience to be deployed instead of lawyers and accountants.
Every company I have ever worked for spends, at board level, enormous quantities of time debating market share, margins, promotional opportunities and the need to increase revenues - yet almost no one on the board has ever had to do that for a living. Sigh. Would we ever appoint an All Black coach who has only ever watched the game from the sidelines? Thought not.
At Zespri, the board and I agreed we had three tasks: Popularise the newly invented Zespri name worldwide for consistently high-quality kiwifruit; launch and make gold kiwifruit successful, particularly in Asia; and rebuild the local management team. During my time, we largely managed the first two, the last took far more time and my successors achieved more than I did.
Tony Marks. Photo / supplied
As an independent director over the past 13 years or so, I have tried to offer advice to both the boards and the management and to make that advice relevant and actionable by the management team.
Like good sportsmen, you have to assess a situation and make a call. Right or wrong. The quarterbacks in this week's Super Bowl had approximately three seconds. In business, you have a little longer but the precepts are the same. Give yourself a halfway decent opportunity to execute and focus those limited resources.
By all means, let's have better coaches but let's put the emphasis on better players.
• Tony Marks worked for Kraft Foods, Carter Holt Harvey, Air New Zealand, Zespri and Virgin Blue over a 40-year period. He is a director of a few small companies in his dotage.
