How do high-flyers get to the top?

In the first of a four-part series, CEO and former All Black David Kirk outlines the secrets of his success.
JULIE MIDDLETON reports.

Despite the fog that inevitably shrouds childhood memories, David Kirk, 42, remembers some moments with great clarity.

They include his parents' reaction the few times when he went off to schoolboy rugby games and didn't pull his weight.

"They never registered disappointment at, say, losing a game," recalls ex-All Black captain Kirk, now in Sydney as chief executive of paper giant Norske Skog Australia.

"But if I didn't try to do my best, I can remember them just saying mildly, 'I thought you didn't give it your best today.' And I knew that was right."

He learned the lesson - thoroughly. Kirk's rampant over-achievement started with medicine. He was a house surgeon for 18 months before leading the All Blacks to their 1987 World Cup triumph.

That fame - the small but powerful Kirk is the only All Black captain to hold aloft the cup - was followed by a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, and the decision to trade planned medical research there for a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

For two years Kirk was a McKinsey and Co consultant in England.

Then he returned to New Zealand as then-Prime Minister Jim Bolger's policy adviser.

But he decided the sharp end of business suited him better, and found his first corporate position in Fletcher Challenge.

And he is as driven as ever, saying he is pushed on "by wanting to know".

"I think I've also got a very curious mind so I'm genuinely interested in things and that keeps me going."

But where does the grunt to keep going at such a pace come from?

"I've got quite a lot of physical energy. I can miss out on sleep for a while and be busy and just keep grinding away."

Sport, he says, has given him "a really sharp focus on winning, and wanting the team I'm in to succeed and having the drive to be the best".

But Kirk admits that his definition of success and his living of it are still at odds.

Success in general, he says, is a "balance of a lot of things - first, a successful family life, and making sure [family members] are progressing in their aims and development.

"Number two would be having a job that I find satisfying and challenging, and which utilises my skills, and in which I'm learning.

"And I guess the third is balancing that with various personal things like exercise, time for reflection and free thought, and doing things with friends."

But long hours when he is in the office and a punishing travel schedule - he's in Europe at Norske Skog's Norwegian head office "six or seven times a year" and goes to Asia and New Zealand - squeezes time with his wife, Brigit, and sons Harry, 7, Barnaby, 9 and Hugo, 11.

"But I really try, when I'm in town and at the weekends, to not have any other commitments."

Kirk worries that New Zealand has a perverse attitude to success and failure that risks handicapping a nation keen for a more entrepreneurial culture.

We applaud winners, but even one mistake earns eternal condemnation.

"Part of the process of making investments or trying to develop new products and ideas is failure," says Kirk.

"That's the nature of a new business or trying to improve a business or take over a business - risk.

"As long as you're able to learn from mistakes, they are extremely valuable," he says. "What really allows you to succeed in the end is confidence and mental drive and the self-belief that fuels keeping on trying."

What is New Zealand's problem?

"Maybe it's a small numbers issue," says Kirk. "There haven't been enough examples of tried and failed, tried and failed, then tried and succeeded.



"What's helped me to learn from mistakes and not get hung up on them is that you need a broad base to stand on.

"You might use rugby as a good example - we're so focused on the one sport that if [rugby teams] don't succeed we can't turn to another sport or another field of endeavour and feel successful in an international context. We pile too much on to one sport.

"It's important for people to focus on success in their own lives and not think about success vicariously - as reflected glory.

"I rely on myself and set my own goals. I feel good about being part of teams, but in the end, I don't expect anyone else to deliver on my behalf."

Kirk has never had a long-term career plan, and changes of direction have come from careful weighing of options.

For example, the impetus to change his Oxford focus arose from the desire for a break from medicine.



But abandoning a career path doesn't equate to wasted years.

"If you take the narrow view that I don't use the anatomy and the physiology or the biochemistry in a specific vocational sense, then you can say that knowledge isn't useful.

"But in the sense that all knowledge is useful and is creating a thoughtful, well-rounded person, and that there are lots of connections between branches of knowledge, I feel that it was all interesting and useful."

And of the next generation of Kirks?

Parental expectations do have an impact on children's success, says Kirk, "but it's not definitive".

The "creative, supportive home environment" he had is something he hopes he is recreating for his sons, who he says are "interested" rugby players rather than "super keen".



"It's hard to get the balance right and I try by providing them with opportunities - putting them into schools we think will suit them, encouraging them in their sport, and, as they get older, getting them around other people who have values and philosophies about learning and success that I think are consistent with ours."