Take bus builder Kevin de Bruin. His family-owned company Able Bus and Coach is successful – splitting its business between supplying buses to mining companies and adventure tourism outfits. It recently delivered its 100th bus, which went to Rio Tinto’s Pilbara Iron.
However, a couple of years ago de Bruin found himself working ridiculous hours, which was taking its toll on both his business and his family life. He confessed that he found himself doing everything in the business, be it wielding a welding torch, delivering buses or even picking up parts.
For de Bruin salvation came from Duncan McPhail managing partner Andrew McPhail who helped guide de Bruin to restructure his business and delegate authority to key people in the company.
According to McPhail, de Bruin’s story is not unique.
The approach is simple – McPhail tells the business owners the truth. The truth about where their business is going wrong, the role they play in the problem and what they need to do to fix it. However, the business owner needs to recognise the need for a change before things can happen.
“Nothing changes until someone with 51 percent of the shares in the company wants it to,” McPhail said. “Unfortunately that’s often where the problem is. But as long as they are listening to you then you can attack the issues sensibly and logically.
“My role is to make sure the business owner can make informed decisions, has the systems in place and to teach them communications and listening skills.
“About 90 percent of the problems in a business are systems and procedures. Communication is also a problem.”
McPhail said getting business owners to make informed decisions was often the key. The fact de Bruin was running around after parts for his business might not be an issue if he had made an informed decision that it was a suitable use of his time.
“I had one client who loved doing the banking each day,” McPhail said. “He could have gotten someone on $30 an hour to do it but he made an informed decision to do it himself.”
Communication and delegation were the key lessons de Bruin reckoned he took from his work with McPhail. “Also to look at the structure of the company and see what everyone was doing,” he said.
“It led to a lot of changes – mainly on my front.”
The process started with McPhail holding regular meetings with de Bruin. These were expanded to include Able’s operations manager and then to the other management people at the bus maker.
McPhail said he would hold those regular meetings for the first six months to 12 months. Those meetings become less frequent as the new business structures fall into place and settle down.
As the communication starts to flow, the solutions start to emerge. “It’s fair to say that 90 percent of the problems are known to people further down the chain,” McPhail said. Those people, he believes, also know the solutions.
The solutions were starting to flow through for Able but there was to be another twist. The operations manager left, forcing another restructure that, de Bruin feels, has been even more successful.
It led to the operations manager’s role being spread four ways: three of those segments – fitout, sheet metal and frames – being run by people from the Able shop floor with de Bruin taking the fourth segment for the time being.
One of those shop floor chiefs is operations manager sheet metal Peter Scafetta. He joined Able while it was starting down its restructuring path.
“I was already familiar with the management side but for Kevin it was a bit of a learning curve,” Scafetta said.
He enjoyed the responsibility of his new role, especially the ordering of materials because it actually made planning his work easier.
McPhail said every business usually had three key managers. These covered marketing, operations and administration.
The path McPhail took towards his business consulting approach was through somewhat unusual means.
Feeling a little fragile after a divorce he “started talking to shrinks”
“I realised the things they were telling me applied to business,” he said. “It basically comes down to communication.”
McPhail has applied his business boosting principles to a range of businesses large and small, including the Queensland theme parks Movieworld and Seaworld.
“I was setting up management systems for them,” he said. “They had the same issues as people like Kevin.”
However, McPhail said he preferred to work with smaller businesses because the results were more immediate.
