Working-class life groomed ports chief

By Selwyn Parker

Sailing on the Manukau Harbour, rep rugby, fishing: is this what makes the quintessentially Kiwi manager?

For Geoff Vazey it does. The Onehunga-born and bred 51-year-old chief executive of Ports of Auckland firmly believes that his management training started in childhood.

He grew up mixing with all kinds of mates, including the millionaire's son next door.

"Status didn't matter at all in this environment," he recalled from his office overlooking New Zealand's largest container terminal. "What did matter was fair play and our ability to communicate.

"I like to think that I can communicate on the same level with the directors on the board and the guys sweeping the wharves."

Mr Vazey invariably uses first names when talking to staff, fills his conversation with slang and does not have much use for management jargon.

His management style also appears to have grown out of his background. Distrustful of consultants, he prides himself on using common sense.

A typically boiled-down one-liner on the dangers of procrastination. "A one-minute decision is better than a one-year worry."

This working-class lad was bright enough to top his school in maths and science, win an A bursary to university and graduate with honours with a degree in engineering.

But there is not much doubt that Mr Vazey acquired the essential elements of his first-person style of management even before he attended university. Son of a tradesman and a milliner, he went to school, played rugby and wrestled in Onehunga, sailed nearby and spent his childhood holidays on the west coast.

He had the two ingredients of his future livelihood - engineering and the sea - almost in his blood. His father was a marine engineer and an uncle ran an engineering business. His grandfather, a champion oarsman, went one better - he owned an engineering business.

Sailing on the Manukau Harbour was much more a working-class sport than on the opposite coast a few kilometres away. Parents either built their kids' dinghies in the garage or the kids did not sail at all.

Racing on a shoestring as for'ard hand, loving wild weather, he progressed steadily through a variety of high-performance dinghies until he reached the ultimate - an 18-footer. By then, of course, he was on the east coast.

One of his skippers went to King's College. "We knew it was teamwork that counted, not your background," Mr Vazey remembers.

Rugby provided other practical management lessons when the burly youngster, playing either lock or blindside flanker, began to catch the attention of coaches.

As he worked his way from representative secondary school teams through to senior club rugby and finally to provincial rep status for the Auckland Colts, he began to see the relationship between peak performance and fun.

"In rugby you will do anything to win. But when the whistle blows, it's just about a good time," he says.

In New Zealand, of course, rugby almost defines the man and Mr Vazey found his prowess at the game useful when, a young engineer, he ran big projects in remote parts of the country.

"It gave me immediate camaraderie. I wasn't just an outsider. I was a rugby player. It meant I got to know people and was accepted quickly."

If the unpretentiousness of a working-class upbringing kick-started his uncomplicated view of life, it was contracting that moulded his attitude to work.

He will never forget his baptism of fire. At 23, barely out of engineering school, he volunteered to take over a contract to build a freezing works in a remote town on the east coast of the North Island.

"All the workers were older than me, 40 to 50 years old. I had stopworks, go-slows, strikes, the lot," he recalls. "But I had to make a fist of it."

Crucially, the job was done and Mr Vazey moved on to bigger jobs with more employees.

As general manager of Robt Stone and Co, New Zealand's biggest mechanical engineering firm, he had over 1000 staff under him in various joint ventures, including the oil refinery at Marsden Pt and, in the mid-70s, the hook-up of the offshore Maui oil rig off New Plymouth.

One night Mr Vazey got a phone call confirming that his firm had the Maui contract, but only if they got 50 staff out there the next day. At the time he did not have anybody on the payroll apart from himself and an engineer. Somehow his team managed to find the essential 50 staff within a few hours.

The urgencies of contracting taught him a lot. "Contracting is a wonderful education for business people. You have total responsibility on the site. If something has to be done, you just do it.

"You have to make it work. For my first 10 years as project manager, I worked all but two Christmas Days."

It was good preparation for the chief executive of an enterprise where the show must go on 24 hours a day. Ports of Auckland has more than 2000 ship calls every year, handles over half a million containers and more than four million tonnes of break-bulk cargo, and employs 540 staff.

Mr Vazey cherishes his weekends. He lives with his wife, Carol, two sons - 7-year-old Dane and 11-year-old Lance - and his maternal grandparents on their 7ha spread at rural Ardmore.

"I live for my boys," says Mr Vazey. He holds strong views on the crucial role of families in preserving the essential coherence of society.

At Ardmore, the Vazeys breed and race thoroughbred horses. "A dreamer's game," he laughs. "But I swap the steel and concrete for the grass and trees of the farm. It clears my head for uninterrupted thought, especially about some of the macro stuff. The farm's my gymnasium."

But he really gets away from it all by fishing. Out on the gulf with his wife and family, a few friends and a crateful of hapuka, he is in his element.

"Fishing! It's the nature thing, a wonderful break from e-mails and phone calls. Nobody can get at you."

But there is no superyacht for Mr Vazey; just a 20ft aluminium cat - just like any other Kiwi.

* Selwyn Parker is available at wordz@xtra.co.nz