Tony Nowell was just 23 when he landed his first significant leadership role. On reflection, being appointed manager of Dunedin’s redeveloped 55 room Townhouse Hotel was, he says, “quite ridiculous”. Ridiculous or not, he thrived on the experience. It also set the pace for fast-moving career in top management.
Now, after 35 years working in the hotel, cosmetics, home products and food sectors for local and multinational companies, particularly in Asia, he’s reached one of life’s personal crossroads which present even the most successful leaders with feelings of both anticipation and trepidation.
Where to from here for Tony Nowell? He stepped down as CEO of New Zealand’s globally successful kiwifruit marketer, Zespri International, in June. The next chapter in his career book is about to be written. He’d like it to be different from the story so far but, would prefer his vision for the future of New Zealand’s food industry to remain central to the plot.
He wants to share some of the leadership lessons he’s learned. Lessons like his understanding that rapidly evolving communications technologies have profoundly changed organisational leadership and management, more perhaps than any other single development he’s witnessed in his career.
Nowell joined the hotel industry as trainee manager in 1973 and stuck with it for eight years. He chose the industry because, in the early ’70s, tourism looked promising. But the sector “never really blossomed” and he moved on to “something more commercial”.
That something was cosmetics. He joined an importer and distributor called William Donald Ltd, an offshoot of Auckland-based Miles and Carlaw Duty Free. Nowell managed the import, manufacturing and distribution of Lancôme brand products and business for which the company held the New Zealand agency.
Import licence restrictions meant the company contract manufactured most of Lancôme’s cosmetics locally. When the licensing agreement came up for renewal L’Oréal, which owned Lancôme, bought William Donald and the enthusiastic Nowell joined the French cosmetic company’s legion of foreign managers, running its manufacturing, distribution and exporting operations in New Zealand.
In 1987 L’Oréal fingered Nowell for general management role with its Indonesian operations. He soon learned what it meant to run business in Asia, including how to work with corrupt local partners. Then, in 1991 he got his first tantalising taste of life and leadership in the food industry. He was head-hunted for another general management role, this time with the Indonesian arm of the giant American-owned household goods, personal care, clothing and food conglomerate, Sara Lee. Six years later he was the company’s regional vice-president responsible for operations in 10 Asian countries including China and India.
Nowell’s move to Sara Lee ultimately led to his homecoming in January 2000. family decision to relocate, belief that things were looking up for the Kiwi economy, plus an attractive offer to take over as Griffin’s managing director, then owned by the French food conglomerate Groupe Danone, proved just too tempting to reject.
His stint at Sara Lee had whetted Nowell’s appetite. He’d become both passionate about food and increasingly frustrated by New Zealand’s underwhelming presence in rapidly growing and increasingly important offshore markets. “I spent lot of time in Asian supermarkets and saw less and less of New Zealand [products],” he says. “I wanted to do something about it.”
His return home seemed perfectly timed. There was optimism in the air, inspired to varying degrees by change in government, some stunning summer weather, and Auckland Viaduct Harbour full to overflowing with America’s Cup euphoria. There was hardly cloud of discontent on the horizon.
Nowell’s tenure at the top of Griffin’s lasted until shortly after Danone sold the business to private equity investor Pacific Equity Partners in June 2006. He vacated the corner office in August that year and spent the next six months working more aggressively on his various roles as chair of ASEAN New Zealand Business Council, chair of the NZ Packaging Accord Governing Council and as New Zealand’s representative on the APEC Business Advisory Council.
Then, in March 2007 he took over as CEO of Zespri. He was appointed as change agent. His brief was to strengthen the executive team and globalise the company’s strategy. He stepped down in June this year having put the people and the building blocks in place and, making personal decision to step back from the job’s demanding international schedule.
Nowell is now taking stock and “focusing on developing personal interests based on New Zealand’s food industry and trade opportunities”. In doing so, he doesn’t see that things have changed much in terms of global prospects for the New Zealand food industry. “There are,” he says “still very few examples of New Zealand doing really well in the international food sector.” He still sees changing this state of affairs as his personal challenge.
He links the problem to number of New Zealand economic and business realities, the first of which is lack of critical mass. “It is difficult to do anything in today’s global marketplace without size,” he argues. Negotiating space on the shelves of retailers that run business operations sometimes larger than the entire New Zealand economy is difficult. “Size counts.”
Zespri, Fonterra and Sealord have critical mass but that, in Nowell’s opinion is about it for the New Zealand food export sector. The difficulty of building critical mass into local enterprise must, he says, be “viewed in the context of New Zealand business in general”. He applauds PGG Wrighton’s chair, Craig Norgate, for his efforts to build scale into his rural services company, but Nowell sees little evidence of other companies following Norgate’s example.
Nowell’s “business context” is euphemism for New Zealand’s approach to issues like leadership, business and management culture, and what he calls “business capability”. It is about Kiwi attitudes and aptitudes. And, in Nowell’s opinion, New Zealand should “seriously address the leadership development issue” and some of its other management capabilities.
The food industry desperately needs greater critical mass to compete globally but, he says, it also needs commercial capability to successfully deliver on the promise that its products offer.
Commercial capability in Nowell’s terms is the ability to successfully take products to market with effective distribution, supply chain and marketing systems. Because of its smallness, New Zealand has limited resources. Even more inhibiting, it has an acute shortage of global management experience. And, he says, New Zealand needs leaders with international experience to successfully take its enterprise, food or whatever, offshore.
New Zealand business might be innovative. It may have great ideas. We have not, however, been successful at turning those ideas into global businesses. “Commercial capability is just as important to the internationalising of an idea as the research capability and the idea itself,” he reasons.
Nowell suggests attracting more “globally experienced” managers, including successful expats, and also turning up the heat on some of the country’s business schools. Business schools should, he suggests, focus on developing commercial capability for New Zealand’s core global business opportunities, particularly the food industry. “Why not create globally recognised food industry business school in Auckland rather than just another all-purpose business school? It would be real point of difference and help New Zealand enormously,” he ventures.
Critical mass and commercial capability are, in Nowell’s opinion, crucial components of any attempt to deliver the future international success of New Zealand’s food industry. But
