Otago

Steve Metzger finished work on the farm on a Friday, wrapped a tie around his neck on Monday morning and walked into the Gore Combined Rural Traders co-operative store to start in retail.  Nineteen years later, he is still with CRT (as it is better known) having spent the last fifteen years in a range of management roles within a company, which is owned by 22,400 South Island farmers.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have a range of management roles here and the different roles have kept me challenged and energized.  I’ve never sat still but then there has never been a time where the company has sat still either,” he says.

Currently working in a property and business development role, it is clear Steve’s passion is managing people and trying to improve performance.  “Managers today spend a lot of time managing things - they tend to shy away from managing people.  From the outset, I wanted to help CRT grow and develop people within the organisation.  I recently completed a Diploma of Front Line Management which has helped me get an understanding of the theory of leadership.  I think we have made a great deal of progress, but there are still a number of areas of areas where we could improve in managing our people.  One area was to work on ‘building bench strength’ which is planning succession for store management roles,” Steve says.

Attending a recent conference in San Diego on a scholarship from NZIM gave Steve a huge insight into the importance of management.  “The conference was told that talent management is the new oil – it will be the number one issue of the future.  It is critical to get people to appreciate that they are important.  Everyone needs to establish the relevance of what they do and why it matters to the organisation.  This applies to even the most junior role.  It is as relevant as much for the office junior as the CEO,” he says. 

This can require coaching which is something he’d like to do more of.  “I want to give people more confidence in their ability to manage people.  The biggest challenge here – as it is everywhere – is people being confident in their own role and having the ability to coach and correct.  The best kind of coaching is informal – you spot a problem, slide up to them, have a quick word to them and try to fix the problem there and then rather than wait six months for a formal review.  It’s much harder to correct the behaviour later.  It is also important to catch people doing a good job and acknowledge that as well,” says Steve.
 
That said, Steve has a stark warning.  “People in the stores can only do as much as their manager lets them.  The company has to ensure the organisation supports managers so they can lead their teams. Training & development is important but a lot of what is taught is never implemented.  Generally nobody does your work for you while you are away at training.  People go back to work and try to catch up – they don’t have time to apply their new skills.  It’s hard to change the way you work when you arrive back and are faced with a computer screen covered in yellow sticky notes all marked ‘urgent’,” he points out.

“Too often we don’t follow through on training. The important work is really embedding the training when they get back.  As a manager, I suggest you spend some time reviewing the training with your staff, set some goals and measure them against those goals at a future date.  I hate to imagine how many training dollars are misdirected in organisations each year,” Steve says.

San Diego also taught him a great deal about innovation – the lifeblood of many companies - but how on earth do you free their minds to be innovative and creative?  How do you put what they create into practise?  The answer, Steve believes, is Human Performance Management which creates the ‘white space’ for people to come up with ideas.

“Try to change the environment – get out of the office away from email and phones.  Importantly, a manager has to set the rules of engagement.  There is no such thing as a dumb idea and people must be confident they can bring up ideas without being ridiculed.  Everyone should have a go and this may require careful facilitation to flush out the quiet people who often have the best ideas,” Steve says.

“The brainstorming phase is called ‘greenhousing’ – a behaviour that allows ideas to get better - everything goes in and we see what grows.  The next step is a more conventional process.  We scope ideas, implement some and measure the results.  This empowers people to come up with solutions and improvements,” he says. 

Steve knows that in rural retail, CRT stores are selling similar products at similar prices in similar locations to others.  “The only way to really differentiate ourselves is our people.  That is why we have to focus more on managing people rather than managing things.  If our staff feel involved and empowered they will give great service.  This builds relationships with our customers and the sales come.”

His other passion is change management and he has been involved in two mergers which dramatically changed the company.  He starts by acknowledging that organisations have to change in order to grow and develop.  People are understandably nervous about change but he argues “if you are not changing, you are standing still.”  He points that these days “standing still is the same as going backwards.”

“The 2003 merger saw our company double in size and turnover.  We had new business areas, new staff, new stores and IT systems to merge.  There could not have been more stuff going on.  The key is communication.  People are less fearful if they know what is happening – when, why and what it means it to them personally.  Everyone immediately breaks news down to the ‘what it means to me’ level anyway.  People want to hear it from the top – from the CEO and senior management – which is why it is so important to have key appointments in place early during change situations.  Communication is needed so people understand and buy into the process,” he says.

“Business cannot stop while a company changes.  We found it useful to set up a number of self-directed teams with a mix of people from both companies.  These teams focussed on a range of issues.  I was in the “Business as Usual Team” – no matter what else was happening around us, our job was to keep the day-to-day business running.  The teams helped the operational aspects of the change go well but the most important factor is still your people,” Steve says.