Top 200 Executive of the Year 2010: Mark Waller – New-world leader

While Mark Waller, the Deloitte/Management magazine Executive of the Year, has been around long time he is very much the face of the future of New Zealand business.
As managing director of Ebos Group, he heads one of growing number of “smart” companies which have developed highly successful business model in New Zealand and then expanded internationally. Like Beca, the Deloitte/Management magazine Company of the Year, Ebos’ success has been based, not on what it produces, but on the exceptional services it provides to customers.
Waller is no flash in the pan. Like our other two Executive of the Year finalists, he has long association with the company he leads, having been its chief executive for the past 23 years. Over time, he has steadily built Ebos Group into billion-dollar success story and medical market leader. Under Waller’s leadership, Ebos has consistently turned in outstanding performances while growing to become truly Australasian enterprise, the Top 200 judges said. “His understanding of organisational culture and how to successfully integrate new acquisitions into the group is exceptional,” they said.
Under Waller’s stewardship, Ebos Group has become the major supplier in New Zealand of medical consumable products and pharmaceuticals to the total health industry, including public hospitals, GPs, aged care centres, and retail pharmacies. Having established strong position in New Zealand, Ebos is now endeavouring to emulate that success in the Australia market.
Waller, who follows last year’s winner Rob Fyfe as the Deloitte/Management magazine Executive of the Year, says Ebos recognised back in the early 1990s that it couldn’t be “product-centric” company. Instead it focused on bridging gap in the health market between what patients require through the various stages of their lives and how health providers deliver what is needed at the right time to service their customers. Embracing new technology has been an important part of that and Ebos has become one of this country’s largest e-commerce trading organisations, with every pharmacy and hospitals able to order online.
“We’re quite unique in having multitude of channels to market, where we have the flexibility to shift,” says Waller. “So if the Government decided, for example, to have more aged care in homes, we have the capability to actually deliver more of that, right now.”
Waller says Ebos has also recognised that what is successful today is unlikely to be so in five years’ time. “Life is moving so quickly in so many areas today, you probably only get two or three-year time frame before the game moves on and you have to do things differently. Every five years or so we reinvent the organisation and reshape it. I think every organisation in dynamic field – and healthcare certainly is – has to do that.”
For Waller, who is Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Management, success is about building and creating things through people. “I’m believer that regardless of the circumstances, whether there be recession or boom, it makes absolutely no difference to the management style you need to adopt. I have management style that I call ‘voluntary co-operation’ – if I can’t convince somebody to follow and contribute, then I’ve failed as leader.
“I’ll go out of my way to explain to people why we want to do something, and if they disagree with some of those things, then I will explain why we think we need to do them. It’s not about forcing anybody to do anything; your staff have to believe in what you want to do,” says Waller. “If you get that right, people come along on the journey; they feed off each other, and you create positive snowball.”
Waller says his background has made him more flexible as person and as leader. “All of us when we are kids are programmed certain way, and I was lucky to have grown up as an expatriate in colonial society in Fiji. I mixed with lot of different cultures, went to foreign schools, and I saw that there is not one way of doing things. It made me very adaptable.”
Waller regards adaptability as an essential component to success in today’s fast moving new world of business. “Business is not prescriptive, it’s live thing. We can over plan. You’ve got to be able to feel and sense and react quickly to things. That’s more important than the mission statements.”

Judges Comments:
Winner
Mark Waller

CEO and Managing Director, Ebos Group

Mark Waller is, said the judges, the person most responsible for the sustained and outstanding growth and profit performance of Ebos Group. He has been at the helm of the company since 1987. In that time he has developed and implemented successful growth strategy – based primarily on strategic and synergistic business acquisitions. Just how adept he is at the integration process is borne out by the results achieved under his leadership. Ebos is now New Zealand’s leading medical consumables enterprise, and is also operating successfully in highly competitive Australasian marketplace. He is hands-on CEO who has guided the company through critical period in its growth and development. His leadership has been outstanding, the judges said.


Finalist
Alan Clarke

Managing Director, Abano Healthcare Group

Alan Clarke has implemented the Abano Healthcare Group’s winning development strategy that last year resulted in his company winning the Deloitte/Management magazine Top 200 Company of the year Award. There is probably no more tangible testament to his success as managing director. Clarke is, said the judges, courageous MD who knows when to buy and when to divest assets for the good of the Group as whole. He has been critical to the building of business that became New Zealand’s largest private specialist medical and healthcare organisation. He has guided Abano through period of dramatic growth without missing performance beat for his shareholders. He has successfully delivered the business to point where it looks set to begin new phase of development – still under his leadership.


Finalist
John Fellet

Chief Executive, Sky TV
John Fellet is highly effective, single minded and focused chief executive who fights to keep low profile in the high profile media world. He is simply and steadfastly dedicated to delivering outstanding results for Sky Network TV. Originally the company’s chief operating officer, Fellet was appointed CEO in 2001. Since then he has systematically built brilliantly successful enterprise.
Fellet’s leadership skills are reflected in the company’s employee-focused culture. He consistently acknowledges that the personal performance of his employees accounts for more than 50 percent of his company’s success. He is, said the judges, an open, honest and understated individual who prides himself on his company’s strong team spirit that allows him to set high standards and have individuals work to achieve them.

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