The Face of the Future of Management
I’m here to prove that the average New Zealander, no matter where he or she comes from, can make it.--As long as you set a goal, take professional management advice and got for it, it works.” - Phil Routhan.
This year’s search for the country’s top young management talent again produced a brilliant line up.--From a field that included nominations from top 200 companies such as new Zealand Post, TVNZ, Clear Communications, ECNZ and Mobil Oil, to some of the smallest and most innovative businesses in the country, the talent and management expertise that surfaced was dazzling.
Once again, competition for the top prize was tough.--These young people are the leaders of tomorrow – the executives who, by a mixture of innovation, goal setting, intellect, hard work and sheer enthusiasm – will drive not just their companies but the country itself into the 21st century.--They’ve got ideas, they’ve got energy, they’re technology literate and every single one of them is a winner merely by being nominated.
The NZIM/Management magazine Young Executive of the Year is Phil Routhan, a 34-year-old self-employed plumber from Hokitika.--Despite his lack of big business background, Routhan was chosen from a field of high-powered young corporate executives for his enthusiasm, perseverance, on-the-job business skills and personal charisma.--Routhan, who hauled his company back from the brink of receivership to a point where it is networked throughout the West Coast of the South Island, is the archetypal self-made New Zealander who left school at 15 to crawl down stormwater pipes by choice.
This year he will extend his company’s network to seven South Island bases, has put together a new mandate for the New Zealand Society of Master Plumbers, will soon join the board of a large South Island company and, in April 1996, will use his disarming West Coast charm to represent New Zealand at the Worldcom Business Achiever Award to be held in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Finalists Russell Stanners from IBM and Lyndelle Wiig from Inland Revenue, are also self made executives.
Wiig has had a fast-track career through the Inland Revenue Department that reflects her enormous ability.--Wiig is a self starter, who has the wide-angled focus to pull large amounts of disparate data together and see the big picture they form well before anyone else can.--At 32, she is New Zealand’s youngest IRD district commissioner and the brains behind the department’s highly successful TQM strategy.
Also 32 years old, Stanners has had a similarly fast-track ride through multinational company IBM.--Today, after 10 years at IBM, Stanners is in charge of eight managers and a staff of 350 – half of them scattered throughout the world.--Stanners’ first spectacular achievement came when he persuaded IBM to purchase its first ever software company, Data Products Incorporated, which he used to enter the applications business.--And that’s just the beginning.
Phil Routhan
Four days after he sat School Certificate at Westland Boys High School, Phil Routhan began as an apprentice in his father’s plumbing business, WH Shannon.--“I’d have started the afternoon after my last exam, but Mum insisted I had a rest,” he says, his light blue eyes glinting with an enthusiasm for plumbing, that he’s had since he first hopped on the big truck and went to work with Dad when he was just three years old.--“It was just after my 15th birthday and I was one of the last 10,000-hour apprentices in New Zealand.--From the time I was eight – as far back as I can remember – I was going to own this company.”
What Routhan didn’t realise when he bough WH Shannon 10 years later, was that things weren’t as rosy as they seemed and the business was on the verge of receivership within two years.--“I went to an accountant.--He wanted all the books and $2000 upfront.--In 1982 that was a lot of money to find.--And then the letter arrived.--The company was beyond repair.--We should liquidate.--And I should seriously look at bankrupting myself.
At this point the determination that has driven Routhan for all of his 34 years kicked in.--“I rang him the next day; are you going to help me or am I going to find another accountant?”
Routhan then put together a five-pronged plan to manage the company out of trouble.--First, borrow “heaps of money – I took some huge risks”; second, plan meticulously “although I was in a dark hole I knew I could plan my way out of it”; third get some good professional help “I headed to Christchurch”; fourth, work like hell – “some people say they work all night when they knock off at half past 11.--I worked all night”; fifth, get some management skills Fast.
The real turning point came when his accountant (yes, the same one who told him to put the company into receivership) pointed Routhan in the direction of the New Zealand Institute of Management.--Before that, as he says, “I had no bench-mark – nothing to measure my ideas and performance against”.
The week-long course was, at first, intimidating.--“I was surrounded by people from BIL, Barclays Bank, Inland Revenue, all thinking who’s the plumber from Hokitika,” he remembers.--“No-one was interested in my opinion – for a day.--Then on the second day, when they were planning a course of management for a company in trouble, I realised, ‘these guys have got not idea’.--So, when they asked ‘what do you think Phil?’, I told them.--Their plan was, quite frankly rubbish.”
As Routhan points out, his solutions to problems had been gained the hard way.--“I suppose it all goes back to me going into business so young.--I had to make a decision and implement it whether it was good or bad.--You learn by your mistakes.--Well I’ve made some shockers.--But I’ll never do them again.”
By the end of the week Routhan’s fellow-attendees were listening hard to the plumber from Hokitika who sucked up their experience like a dry Wettex and also added his own hard-won methods to the discussion.--By Friday, he was judged the group’s “person most likely to succeed”.--Today, more than five years later, those same businesspeople still call Hokitika to talk over their ideas and problems.
BACK ON THE West Coast, Routhan slapped his new experience into practice.--“I have an ability to plan ahead,” he says with likeable Coaster candour.--“I can see a picture of what’s going to happen, in quite minute detail….--I can also deal with those problems very quickly, roll the sleeves up and get this thing fixed.”
One of Routhan’s early initiatives had been to design and build what he calls a mobile workshop.--Similar in size to a camper van, these mobile workshops now speed up and down the Coast bulging with plumbers’ supplies – ready and able to fix anything from burst water pipes, drainage and roofing.--As Routhan says, "we do everything from tap washers to new commercial buildings”.--And, although a quote from WH Shannon may not be the cheapest on the Coast, it will reflect efficiency and the highest standards of plumbing.--As Routhan says on his business card: “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten – when you need a plumber call a good one!”
Within four years the turnover of the firm had increased by 400 per cent.--At the same time, armed with his new managerial skills and ability to work as part of a team, Routhan now has five mobile workshops on the road and the company is established in Greymouth, Fox Glacier and Wanaka.--Over the next 12 months he plans to open two more branches – one in Ashburton and the other in Te Anau.
Routhan’s strategy for success sounds simple.--As he says although his colleagues are excellent plumbers, they are not necessarily interested in managing their businesses.--Routhan provides a centralised, Hokitika-based, reception/referral system, plus a centralised billing and managerial core.
Although WH Shannon is not hooked into an open technology system yet, management is geared to know where the company’s profit is coming from, which is its biggest profit line, what products it’s using most, and where the biggest losses are occurring.
Routhan’s success in his trade (“from the beginning I approached plumbing as a profession”) means that he was one of eight plumbers approached by Spicers to help put together a strategic plan for the New Zealand Society of Master Plumbers.--At that point he showed his innovative skills by putting together his own research programme.--“I spent about 300 hours on it,” he says.--“Basically I got the plumbers in the country to write the strategic plan on membership criteria and issues.”
He has also been approached to become a director of a public plumbing-related company and, within the next couple of years, sees the WH Shannon network extending to cover the entire South Island.
“I don’t accept anything less than excellence,” he says.--“I have a vision – and I don’t ever, ever, let problems get in the way.--If I have a problem, I step over it and get on with the vision.
“I’m here to prove that the average New Zealander, no matter where he or she comes from, can make it.--As long as you set a goal, take professional management advice and go for it, it works.”