BB: There’s no question. Sometimes it’s hard to say this without it sounding sort of cute or arrogant, but sometimes you wonder, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if we could do that?’ Absolutely, that comes from a drive to want to do more and be better– continuous improvement. It comes from a sense of, ‘Let’s break the mould. Let’s do things that haven’t been done before.’
There are two parts. One is that it’s just a part of my nature, probably. But two is it’s also proven to be successful because you’ve always got to be breaking the mould. You’ve always got to be moving forward.
BK: These are not businesses that you can just sit down and say, ‘That’s done.We’ll just let the cash start rolling in.’
BB: I’m not sure there’s any business you can do that to. So I think it’s a business necessity, at least it is for growth, if you want to continue to become more dynamic. But you’ve got to push yourself to improve. You’ve got to make some mistakes to learn from them, but hopefully not too many. So I think there’s a nice combination of it being a sensible thing to do from a strategic point of view. It’s also important to do something that keeps you fresh and current and moving forward.’
BK: And good to retain your best people by challenging them.
BB: I think that’s the nature of our organisation. I’m not sure that that would be true for everybody, but there’s no question that if you’re a leader in BB Retail Capital, you know that there are no easy days. You’ve got to keep going. Not everybody likes that culture because it is continuous improvement. If something can be done better, then it’s going to be done better. It’s not, ‘Oh, it’s OK,’ or, ‘Our result is good.’ It really is about whatever we’re doing now, we’re going to do better next year. And that can be a bit relentless to some. I don’t see it that way.
‘You’ve got to push yourself to improve … It’s important to do something that keeps you fresh and current and moving forward.‘
BK: Also, do you find that you attract people that are attracted to that mindset, to those values?
BB: I think cultures are a wonderful thing because when you step into a culture, culture helps you define whether you’re going to like it or not. And not everybody has to like it. That’s the important thing. It shouldn’t be forced. But it is one that says we will look after our customers no matter what. We will continuously improve, no matter what. Our cost of doing business will go down every year, no matter what. They also happen to be very sensible and appropriate business philosophies, too.
BK: yes. How much of that is conscious in terms of you sitting down and thinking that through and writing it down? How much of that is from the cut and thrust of day-to-day working out, that it’s just necessary to get your costs under control and keep them going down in order to stay competitive?
BB: Easy answer, Brett, and there are two parts to it. In the early days, it was just a necessity. The best thing I ever did was come up with a back-of-the-envelope, napkin-type solution, but there was thinking going on. Now, there is no question with the group the size that it is, that I and others think about it, we launch projects, we have a university every year to bring two hundred and fifty executives from around the world in and we launch programs that are designed to continuously foster that thinking. So, there’s no doubt, as we’ve got bigger, it’s become purposeful. It’s been thought about. But in the early days, it was just,‘Hang on. How do we do that better?’
BK: Tell me about your training. How much training do you do, is there an induction? Has there been a big dollar commitment to your annual university?
BB: I’m certain that we overspend in terms of how others would do this but again, there are two parts. It’s very important now, but I’ve always wanted to learn and I just expect everybody else should, too. It was a bit of a shock to me that people don’t always want to. So I force my guys to read books. But there is no question that it’s important.
You asked me about our weaknesses at the moment, and we are not good enough at training all our team. Retail is a high-churn industry so we’ve constantly got to be teaching and training on both the cultural stuff as well as how to do the job. And we don’t do it well enough. We’ve just introduced some new software last year that I am hoping will make a real difference. It’s called World Manager and I love it. I think it’s a game changer for retail because it allows us to track and be more interactive with our training in a systemised way. Essentially, that’s what it does.
BK: Doing more, more consistent and controlled.
BB: Yes, however change is difficult for organisations and we’ve got eight thousand people. Humans like to get into a rhythm. Rhythm is very important for business. But when it comes to change, you’ve actually got to get the team out of their rhythm. So, it’s hard.
BK: What’s the role of planning? Does it involve retirement?
BB: There’s always a plan. But I have to tell you, I’m not one of those guys who plans more than five years ahead. I’ll have a view of where we’re going but I won’t have a hard and fast plan that goes beyond five years, because I have never been able to see a plan that’s set that far ahead. Certainly, for the businesses that we operate, I’d prefer to have a view of where we’re going and then be flexible, probably a bit of that entrepreneurialism that allows for, ‘Hang on …’
BK: Some flexibility.
BB: But in broad sense will I ever retire? Actually I don’t think so. I like what I do.I still work six and seven days a week, which is a bit unnecessary these days.I’m probably slowing down somewhat but I still call myself a retailer. Our homemaker property is a very big business now and separate and standalone and Darren Holland runs that. We’ve just moved into beef, so we’ve got beef, and we’ve got fifty thousand head of cattle up in the Northern Territory.
BK: What’s it called?
BB: The station is called Beetaloo. It’s 2.6 million acres [1 million hectares] so it’s very big. And that is absolutely what it’s about now. If I had a broad sense of, you know, ten years from now, then we’ll have a lot more beef and we’ll be good at beef. And the reason beef–
BK: Do you get support? you grow it and sell it?
BB: I absolutely believe in the export market because I’m an absolute believer in Asia.
BK: A lot of people to feed up there.
BB: The world is progressing. It’s going to need more and more food. Beef is going to be an important part of the growing middle class in all the South-East Asian countries. Protein is very important. And so, I like it. Maybe it’s a little bit of that country boy in me coming back again.
There really are three main areas, but from time to time, good investments come to me. BridgeClimb is a classic example of somebody bringing an idea that just appealed to me. As it turned out, it only appealed to Paul Cave and Brett Blundy and nobody else!
BK: Except a few million people who have now done it!
BB: And that was an eleven-year journey.
BK: To get it approved.
BB: Exactly. So from time to time,