Tim Gibson: NZTE's ideal candidate
Former NZTE chief executive Tim Gibson spoke with Caitlin Sykes before departing the organisation he had helmed since its inception
Wednesday, February 10 2010 || Been there done that || BY Caitlin Sykes
A look at Gibson’s CV would certainly identify him as the right man to helm the government agency charged with boosting the capability of Kiwi companies and helping them take on the world. With degrees in German and law, he spent three years at the State Services Commission before joining manufacturing company Donaghys, where, aged 25, he became the country’s youngest secretary of a listed public company. He spent 12 years with the Dairy Board, here and overseas, and a year as managing director of Kapiti Cheeses before taking on the NZTE role.
Gibson, who stepped down from NZTE at Christmas, talked to Unlimited about his achievements, changes in the way we do business offshore and what he loves about going global.
“When you’re in vibrant economies, there’s an energy level that is quite addictive, and different cultures to me are very interesting,” says Gibson. “There’s another dimension too, when you see New Zealand from the other side of the world. You see the challenges that we face but you also see the unique qualities. It’s really important for New Zealand businesspeople — and all people if they can — to take as many opportunities as possible to see New Zealand from the outside.”
NZTE celebrated success in ‘international business’ rather than ‘export’ at its annual awards this year. What changes in international business have you seen during your time at NZTE?
The speed of international business, driven off the acceleration of communications technology, has just been phenomenal. International business operates in real time and that has also brought with it new ways of doing business.
The International Business Awards was a deliberate signal on our part to provide some mutual reinforcement of the need to think differently. Internationalisation is all about being in the marketplace, bringing investment back into New Zealand, locating those parts of your business in different parts of the value chain where you can actually achieve better return. And New Zealanders have been demonstrating they can actually embrace those changes. Some do it more quickly than others.
What are the challenges for New Zealanders doing business offshore?
Successful business is based on relationships and you can only build relationships over time and by spending and investing in the relationships, which means being in the market. Many New Zealand companies are incredibly good at it, but many are still not so good at it. There’s a tendency, probably amongst more traditional companies, to go to a trade fair once, maybe get a couple of orders and then do nothing in-market until the next trade fair 12 months down the track. That’s simply not going to cut it in the future.
The other challenge is we’ve got to get a bit harder nosed. As New Zealanders we’re seen as being high on human values, but we’re seen to be low on commercial sharpness. We tend to underestimate the quality of what we’ve got and we’re not necessarily aggressive in terms of pricing what we’ve got.
The fundamental challenge remains education on how to run businesses successfully. Too often if you’re faced with paying next week’s wages and getting the cash in the door you don’t have the ability to step back and think medium or longer term about what’s happening in your industry or sector and how you can do better internationally.
Do you feel you’ve achieved what you set out to do at NZTE?
Absolutely. One of the initial concerns I had when I came into the role was although we had quite a strong overseas presence we tended to be a little reactive and I was keen to see the overseas network be the early indicators for the New Zealand business community about emerging opportunities and threats.
What we have found consistently is there are more than enough opportunities internationally for New Zealand companies. The challenge has been we don’t have enough New Zealand companies with the skills and capabilities to take advantage of those opportunities. I was very keen to have a model whereby we were pulled by the marketplace, which then informed the programmes we were running in New Zealand to build that capacity and capability in New Zealand companies to respond to those opportunities.
One thing I am very pleased about is we spent a lot of time and energy trying to find ways of measuring what we do. We now have a performance measurement framework that is better than anything I have seen elsewhere and over time it will give us a unique ability to track the impact of interventions we make. That is going to be a powerful tool.
What’s been your biggest surprise?
Coming into a government environment, it has been the focus on process in the broader government sector as opposed to a focus on outcome. I recall a few years back the chairman and I went to brief the minister of finance on a particular issue and there were 21 officials in the room. I’m sure they were all following a great process but I'm not sure what it added to the outcome.
When I took this role on, I remember talking to some of the policy agencies and saying ‘can you show me the overall New Zealand strategic plan?’ so I could figure out where NZTE delivered to that plan. And of course there wasn’t one. There were policy objectives from the government obviously but I’m used to documented strategic and business plans. There weren’t any.
What’s your best bit of advice?
Rely on common sense. If you have intelligent people who are clear about their overall desired objectives you should be able to rely on people exercising common sense to achieve that objective.
I’ve spent the last six years quite deliberately at NZTE working on NZTE in terms of creating a strong and vibrant organisation with good products and services. It’s not perfect — I’m the first to acknowledge that — but to be able to do that you have to have people you can rely on to exercise good judgement and good common sense.
