Personal file:Jeremy Fleming

Chief executive, Oxygen Business Solutions.

Born April 30, 1955, Auckland.

Married to Maria, three daughters.


What do you do?

Chief executive of Oxygen Business Solutions, with 226 people, offering IT and business services, hosting and developing websites, and outsourcing accounts payable and receivable.

Why do you do it?

I find the business exciting and changing, and I'm in the process of creating a new business.

Why is what you do important?

Our business allows our customers to be successful in business, and frees them to do what they do.

What is the biggest challenge facing your organisation?

Changing the culture of our organisation from being a corporate department to being a customer-focused, successful business. Oxygen was created out of Carter Holt Harvey.

What annoys you about it?

It's hard work! The pace of change is always slower than I'd like it to be.

What excites you about it?

The fact that I'm creating something new with my people. We're a new organisation, providing services that have not been bundled together before.

What was your first career aspiration?

To be a forester - a romantic notion of being out in the bush.

I'm an urbanite from Auckland ... but I have a bachelor of forestry science.

How would you describe your management style?

As clear a vision as possible, to provide very clear and continuous communication.

How do you describe your personality?

A reasonably reserved person; I'm not a natural communicator. But I'm able to provide direction and inspiration.

If there was one thing you could change about your life, what would it be?

Better balancing of work and non-work life.

What business deal would you most like to have done?

The IT out-sourcing of Telecom - the deal between Telecom and EDS.

If I could have done that deal, it would have been a mine.

Which management guru do you believe in?

I don't believe in any of them exclusively. Dilbert's damn good.

If you could change one aspect of NZ business, what would it be?

To encourage business people to be much more outward-looking, promoting New Zealand as being the marketplace of choice, and being imaginative, and really capitalising on the strengths we do have.

We are prepared to work really hard on innovative ideas.

Who is your favourite politician?

Someone like Doug Graham, who made a reasonable job of a difficult portfolio - Treaty settlement processes.

Helen Clark has many attributes of a good politician, not least of which is determination.

Who is your business hero?

David Irving (Synergy chief executive and chairman of Competitive Auckland), and Stephen Tindall (Warehouse founder) - more for his reasonable philosophical approach to business rather than for specific achievement.

Had you not been a CEO, what would you like to have been?

I'd probably see myself in a more service-oriented activity, local government or the public service.

Somewhere where I could make a difference to people's lives.

What was your last cultural experience?

Attending a tangi for one of my people's mothers in Auckland.

That was a genuinely moving cultural experience.

What is your greatest regret?

Devoting too much of my time in the last 10 years to work, and not to family.