399. Back to the Future

Christchurch NZ

Strategic planning meeting out at Tait where brother Douglas works. Two excellent presentations the first by Graham Grant who is the COO of Sequent and the second by Roger Dennis, a Futurist. The day was presented by Greg Allnut from Advisory works, a man for whom I have a great deal of respect so I was very confident that we were in for a channelling and rewarding day. Matthew my cousin from Sydney also joined us and it was very interesting to get his perspective as someone coming in from the outside.

I was very interested to hear the Sequent story from a staff member as my good friend Mark Nixon is a founder of ARONZ, the original parent company and, obviously, I was pretty well versed in the story from a founders side of the fence. While Graham was giving his excellent presentation it crossed my mind that Andy, our CEO would also present well in this type of meeting and wondered how his presentation would differ from what I might think was our story, as the founder of our company.

Roger the futurist quickly dragged us out of our torpor in terms of what our business world might be in the second horizon, the five to ten year space. I know that pearls of wisdom were floating past me I just had to get my head into the world of possibility rather than the current realties, opportunities and world that we live in. I filled three pages of my note book with notes and I particularly liked his challenge to look at the anchors that are stopping us rather than absolutely focusing on guessing what the world over the time horizon will be. I know that I missed more than I took in but it was a very stimulating and thought provoking presentation both for the business and me personally. Thank you Kendall our chair for organising these presenters.

My brother Douglas joined us for lunch and as a senior engineer also brings a lot of perspective and has given me some very insightful advice over the twenty six years that I have had the business. It was a very good opportunity for him to meet the board of whom he has heard a lot. Weirdly, at every break the senior management team (our staff) would disappear off for a walk in groups. I have no idea if it was intentional but I certainly found it irritating and didn’t add anything to the cohesion of the day.

During the afternoon we worked through an excellent programme organised by Greg taking us through structured thinking as to how the business might evolve and change. We frequently broke into small groups then presented to the group as a whole. It was very good programme and interesting hearing from the management team how the business has changed from how it used to be run when none of the people expressing the change worked in the business back when Len and I were in the business three years ago. It is wonderful having Len, our previous GM on the board for continuity and Kate for her bigger business experience. Kendall our chair, so often the facilitator at these type of events was an extremely worthy participant and has been involved in the company for ten years at least so knows us well and understands the challenges of a growing business.

In the evening board and SLT went out for dinner at Pirawun’s family restaurant. Pirawun was actually working there so it was lovely to see her again and, of course, the food was absolutely incredible. I was absolutely shattered as it was the end of a long day.