Icebreaker chief gives benefit of experience

More than 60 members of the business community attended the first Wairarapa Chamber of Commerce breakfast event held in Greytown last week.

Icebreaker general manager global operations Michael Jamieson of Martinborough spoke to guests at the White Swan about his business experience last Thursday.

He discussed the importance of getting the balance right between the "hard stuff" such as strategy, structure and systems and the "soft stuff" like shared values, skills, style and staff.

"It's cool to have a great strategy, the hard stuff, but the bedrock on which it's built is the people involved and, if you have the right people, they will figure out the problems and solve them as they go," he said.

"If they have the right skills and abilities, you can leave them to it without a whole lot of day-to-day minute management. It's very important to get the soft stuff right and get it to balance with the hard stuff. I think that's the key."

Chamber chief executive officer Stephanie Gundersen-Reid told the Times-Age: "It was an awesome turnout. We were oversubscribed, which just goes to show that doing things in Greytown is going to work for our chamber members, and we will certainly be doing this more often."

Accountancy firm Rightway sponsored the event.

Chief executive Greg Sheehan said Wairarapa had a wealth of talent throughout the region and was fortunate to have people like Mr Jamieson living here.

"I think we need to keep our horizons high here in the Wairarapa, and have aspirational businesses and businesses that do take on the world," he said.