THE MANAGEMENT INTERVIEW Geoff Vazey – Berth control

I’m not sure Geoff Vazey has been fully briefed on who to expect. When I stand in the Ports of Auckland reception area – sole woman among the men – he doesn’t seem to be able to find me. Recovering nicely when I move forward and introduce myself as the editor of Management magazine he’s gracious enough to try to mask his surprise and I’m gracious enough not to mention the look on his face – until now of course.
Sitting opposite each other on the low chairs in his office, he’s immediately relaxed, looking away while pulling his thoughts together for each question, long legs stretched out sideways.
He slips swear words into the conversation so fluidly that you don’t realise until you go back over the tape of the interview that his language is quite earthy. It’s quite refreshing because lot of CEOs – no matter what they say in the privacy of their own boardrooms – prefer not to be caught on tape with the odd expletive.
The language probably stands him in good stead down in the smoko room where, when we amble through later looking for places to take photos, Vazey – conspicuous with his entourage of, by now, three women – is showered with kindly blokish abuse and waylaid for quick chats.
We’d met before, I remind him, when he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame created by his old school, Onehunga High. Being Onehunga born and bred, he says, means he grew up with mixed bag of people right from the start – from those who’d got nothing, to some who’d got plenty. Kids cut through the “crap” about class, he notes, and “you’re all just people”. Playing rugby in Auckland’s Manukau district, he also quickly cottoned on that it’s not reputation that counts “but what you’re actually made of”.
It was only much later, he says, that he realised his schooling had probably taught him how to relate to and get accepted by wide range of people – from the guy with the broom to the managing director. That, and rapid succession of projects for mechanical engineering construction outfit Robt Stone & Co immediately after he finished his engineering degree, which had him managing teams of guys twice his age up and down the country.
“In those days, industrial relations was very different scene,” he says, and later mentions an unspecified incident in which one of his direct reports had bullet through his window in the middle of the night. “When you’re out in the sticks running job it can get lonely territory… and pretty heavy.”
He cites company owners and founders Bob Stone and Jim Donald as “wonderful, strong characters” who mentored and guided him in his early days in business, but stops short of attributing specific learnings to them. “It’s not that simple really. I got support.”
While seldom of the gun-toting variety now, industrial relations can still test the mettle of port manager. Today’s “less heavy” environment, says Vazey, is tribute to series of legislative changes by governments on both sides of the political spectrum over the past 20 years and is marked by “more sophisticated” negotiations through lawyers.
Not that Vazey looks like he’d walk away from good standoff at the OK Corrall. He says he gets great satisfaction from “going down to the smoko room and talking with 50 to 100 people for half an hour about what’s going on, fielding their questions and being pretty much Kiwi bloke”.
Not all of this came easily at first, he admits, recounting laconically how in his early days as an engineer and like many young managers, if he’d been told he had to make speech the next day “he’d probably have taken holiday”.
In any case, Vazey reckons natural worriers are weeded out of the role as it puts unbearable pressure on any individual who cannot find way to switch off from the stresses of the job. He argues – not unreasonably – that after 19 years in the construction business, during which he lived in 19 different houses, he’s probably got enough experience to know what works for him and his family.
More recently, Vazey’s business has been the centre of media attention as Auckland Regional Holdings steadily upped its shareholding over the vital 90 percent threshold between April and July this year and finally tipped Ports of Auckland back into full public ownership after 13 years as private company. Since we are speaking just one day after the announcement Vazey can justifiably say he hasn’t been involved in any discussions on what this will mean to the current board of directors and segue neatly into talk of how it’ll be “business as usual” at the port.
When port workers ask him if they’ll still have jobs under the new ownership, he says he tells them that depends on how well they service the ships out there on the dock. Doing good job is the greatest security they have. For his part, Vazey looks forward to “some simplification” of his responsibilities as the compliance and communication requirements of running listed company fall away.
Will moving to full public ownership require different way of managing? He doesn’t think so. The essence of the business is running port and that won’t change.
There is also, of course, the more contentious property side of the equation. As is the case with most of the nation’s ports, Auckland occupies what Vazey calls “a pretty special geographical patch… So every man, his dog and his mate’s got view on it”. In Auckland’s case this includes some substantial waterfront investment properties in prime locations such as the western reclamation next to the prestigious Viaduct Harbour. And Mike Lee, chairman of the Auckland Regional Council whose infrastructure arm Auckland Regional Holdings will soon have 100 percent control of the Ports, has made it perfectly clear that part of the plan for the future is to ensure Aucklanders get waterfront that is “managed and developed in comprehensive way, taking into account both economic and public-good benefits”.
In any case, scrutiny is nothing new to Vazey. With two thirds of the nation’s imports by value and one third of our exports on the same basis trolling through the port in any given year, Vazey jokes that he gets phone calls from Michael Cullen’s office and Treasury asking how the economy is going.
Back in February this year, when he was talking to the ports’ latest half yearly results, Vazey had been careful to note how ports are long-term business and that periodic wins and losses between the various ports are reality of the container business. He warned commentators that care should be taken not to undermine the ports’ long-term viability by focusing just on the short term.
He was, of course, referring to much-publicised series of changes in shipping services by companies including the world’s largest shipping line Maersk Sealand, Mediterranean Shipping Company and CP Ships. Most importantly, the company has also garnered heap of media attention in recent times regarding Fonterra’s upcoming decision on which port or ports will get its dairy volume for the new season. The picture is further complicated by Maersk’s pending takeover of the world’s fourth largest shipping line P&O Nedlloyd, which stands to substantially upturn New Zealand’s logistics chain with the world.
Vazey refuses to be drawn on the details, pointing out that when it comes to multimillion-dollar contracts, negotiating through the media is the “worst way”. “They could use few words in the wrong place and you’ve lost the whole deal. It’s commercial and in confidence. That’s the way it should be.
“The media,” he says, “thinks there’s probably bigger story than there is and are guessing and speculating.”
It must be galling, then, to be the subject of such detailed scrutiny when the bigger picture is more important? Vazey prefers to see it in sporting terms, pointing out that the commentators are simply adding up the score as the game is being played and that, along with few other “touchstone indicators” such as the nation’s oil consumption, the Ports of Auckland is merely playing out its role