Managing director Michael Carey understands the importance of not getting bogged down in minutiae of business, writes Caroline Madden
MOST COLLEGE students have more pressing concerns – all-night parties followed by gruelling daytime TV schedules – than setting ambitious career goals for 10 or 20 years down the line.
Not so Michael Carey, who displayed a vital leadership trait even in his formative years – vision. As Carey explains on this week’s visual case study, (which can be accessed on www.irishtimes.com/business/education/), he devised a grand plan for his future at an early stage.
“When I started in college after leaving school, I wrote down on a piece of paper a series of ambitions and targets that I wanted to achieve. One of them was that I wanted to be a company director at the age of 30; one of them was that I wanted to be a managing director by the age of 35; and I wanted to own my own business by the age of 40.”
Carey’s vision for his career became a reality. He ticked off his ambitions one by one, and 12 days before his 40th birthday in 2002, he led a management buy-in of Nestlé’s Irish business, Fruitfield Foods. In 2004, Fruitfield acquired WR Jacob and became the Jacob Fruitfield food group, with Carey as chief executive.
However Carey, a majority shareholder of Jacob Fruitfield, then decided to redefine his leadership role. He rearranged the management structure, appointing a managing director to oversee the day-to-day running of the business, while he took up a more strategic role as executive chairman. In doing so he avoided a classic business mistake.
Innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs who have invested huge amounts of time and energy in setting up and growing their business can find it extremely difficult to delegate. Many end up micromanaging the business rather than driving progress, because they are unwilling to relinquish control of important tasks. However, in order for a company to make the transition from an early-stage venture to a mature business, it is often necessary for the entrepreneur to let go of their “baby” and hand over the reins to an experienced management team.
The managing director of Jacob Fruitfield focuses on the nitty gritty of running the business, which covers everything from customer satisfaction to achieving sales and profit targets. As chairman, Carey now has a more forward-looking role. “The value that I can bring tends to be in the areas of identifying the potential to build new strategic relationships with people external to the business.”
It’s all too easy for leaders to get bogged down in the minutiae of the business. But unless they are able to see the bigger picture, it’s impossible to identify challenges and opportunities coming down the track.
Handing over the responsibilities of managing the day-to-day operations gave Carey time to pursue other ambitions, such as socially responsible endeavours in Africa. He is closely involved with not-for-profit African food organisation Heart of Africa. As well as fulfilling some of his personal ambitions, this type of altruistic work has also enhanced the corporate reputation of his business.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes, whereby companies voluntarily integrate social and environmental concerns into their business operations, has become increasingly popular. According to Chambers Ireland, CSR has been shown to bring a number of business benefits including customer attraction and retention, increased brand value and reputation and increased revenues.
Despite the potential benefits, there are now concerns that CSR issues will disappear thanks to the global economic slowdown. However, the argument has been made that it should not be viewed as a fad to be discarded as soon as times get tough. Reputation is a crucial differentiator in business, and public relations experts say reputation is hard won but easily lost, so companies must consider the reputational risks of cutting back on social responsibility.
