EDITOR’S LETTER : Built to Grow

If this year’s Top 200 Awards are anything to go by, successful companies don’t give two hoots about talk of slightly less buoyant economic conditions. They’re too busy forging their own destiny. They are, in the words of one of this year’s Top 200 judges Sandy Maier, making their own luck through “step-by-step plans that are well laid and well executed by people who are properly selected and well incentivised”.
Maier has the gift of making tricky stuff sound easy. This year’s winning companies share his knack of slicing through the everyday minutiae of corporate decision-making to get to the heart of the matter. “What do I have to do today to get my organisation to where we want it to be tomorrow?”
Outstanding companies know the answer to that one: Companies like Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and Fletcher Building which keep cropping up in our awards year after year. Companies like Pumpkin Patch that have made the transition into overseas markets and are increasingly confident of their own abilities to foot it on the world stage. And pint-sized enterprises such as Open Country Cheese that steadily keep on growing in their own tiny niche and on their own terms.
With companies such as these as role models it becomes little easier to begin to imagine New Zealand’s place in world that will be so radically different for future generations. place where the pace of technology will accelerate beyond the boundaries of our current comprehension. Where today’s national and regional boundaries are likely to morph, mutate and blur. And where the very notion of businesses and organisations may be up for grabs. The only thing not likely to change too much will be the values of the people behind such structures.
Once year, Management magazine and international consultancy Deloitte join forces to provide snapshot of the health of our major enterprises. This year, they’re in fine form. Despite slightly less buoyant economic environment our top 200 companies hiked their collective revenue by 8.5 percent. The benchmark to entry rose yet again. After last year’s massive jump from $70 million to $113 million, the company filling this year’s number 200 slot had to show evidence of at least $118 million to get mention. All of which shows that New Zealand business is in fine fettle.
On more personal note, I would like to thank our many readers, partners, advertisers and sponsors for all your support this year for the magazine, our awards and our website. You help, inspire, mentor, cajole, prod, challenge, inform and support us in so many ways. We couldn’t do this without you. Thank you for another great year.