March 12, 2024 • 48 mins
Joining us on the Podcast is Nadine Tunley, CEO of Horticulture New Zealand.
Nadine has always had a very strong connection with the food and fibre sector, having grown up in rural New Zealand. Prior to Hort NZ, Nadine was primarily in the apple and pear industry and Mānuka honey.
Nadine candidly talks to Emma and Claire about surrounding yourself with great people, resilience and grit, and the importance of being bold and owning your mistakes.
This was a great chat full of golden nuggets for anyone out there who may need an extra push to go out and make that next step.
You can listen here: https://lnkd.in/gYz4hfXD
#blackheelsandtractorwheels #podcast #ruralwomennz
Thank you so much for joining us Nadine!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Black Heels and Tractor Wheels podcast, where
we are sharing stories from a range of women from
around New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For nearly a century, Rural Women New Zealand has been
dedicated to strengthening and supporting women and children to become
empowered members of their communities.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We hope that by hearing these stories from inspiring women
all around the country, you'll feel inspired yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
We're your hosts, Emma Higgins and Claire Williamson, and would
love for you to join and subscribe to our podcast
so you don't miss our rural stories.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
The way that we've been starting these conversations is just
trying to understand a little bit more about you and
your background. And the question really is is what do
we need to know about you that has shaped you
to who you are?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Now? What's a bit of your background that we need
to really understand.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
I joined the sector a long time ago. Now, I've
been around primary all my life, so I grew up
in I was born in Hawk's Bay, but then also
rural Taranaki. Both older sisters married farmers, one pastor, one dairy,
so I've been around farming for most of my life.
(01:12):
Really most of my formative years, but didn't grow up
as a farmer's child. My parents were local publicans actually,
so yes, I got the exposure of hearing all of
the problems and challenges that farmers faced from quite a
young age. When I got into my own sort of career,
I went, I was sent to boarding school in New Plymouth,
(01:35):
again predominantly farmer's children, hearing all of the challenges that
they faced as we were in our teenage years. And
so when I left school, I think, I suppose the
biggest thing is I always just took every opportunity that
was presented. So I for door opened and the time
was allowed me to do something, I would generally take
(01:58):
the opportunity. Think that I was brought up in quite
a male dominated environment. And my eldest is thirty something
and my daughter's twenty six, so I was of that
ariostole where, you know, woman probably didn't do all of
the things traditionally though, you know, stayed at home and
(02:20):
fed the sharers and cooked and did all of those things.
But I loved motorbikes and tractors and all of those things.
So the only way to have a heavy involvement, and
that was to be more physically involved. So I did haymaking,
I did silage making, I drove tractors, and I rode motorbikes.
So that's kind of what shaped me, I suppose, the
(02:41):
love of all of that. And yeah, then when I
got into horticulture back in two thousand, I moved to Nelson.
Actually I was married with my children and husband and
we moved to Nelson. The intent was I was supposed
to take a year off actually because I was to
stay at home and bemum cook and do all those
(03:03):
wonderful things. And I think it lasted about six weeks
where my daughter was like, this is not going to work,
and I was like, this is not going to work,
and she wanted to go back to child here and
I wanted to go back to work. So I ended
up for a little while in the seafood sector. I
was working for a company who did liprono extraction from
greenland muscles, and then there was a year long contract
(03:25):
in while I was doing that, the accounting firm that
serviced that company ended up at the end of my
contract saying lot, come and work for us, would be
keen to have you work in our business development area
and that's what I did for a little while, again
quite rural being and Nelson Tasman at the time. Back
in two thousand and when I joined that company, it
(03:47):
was at the very start of the deregulation environment for
apples and pears, where enza was what it was back then,
or the New Zealand app on pearboard was a year
prior to deregulation, and I was in the accounting firm
doing business development when a group of orchids from down
there had got an export license to export a year
(04:09):
before deregulation, and so they came to the firm and
said would we manage that export license and run that
program for the year, and I got the job to
do that. It was tasked to me, so again as
opportunities present, I just sort of said, oh yeah, I'll
give that a go and the rest is pretty much history,
(04:31):
to be fair, because then it just tied me into
a sector in an industry that I've been in ever since.
And because I'd come from a rural background, really it
was new, so it was exciting. It was something different.
I've been you know, animals, not plants, and I enjoyed
that learning environment with deregulation I think the part I
(04:55):
love the most because I was in that finance background
with business development. I was excited by the prospect of
how do you take you know, twelve different varieties at
Apple's with twelve different what we call count sizes, so
from a small apple to a large you send them
to I think it was about thirty four countries in
(05:16):
that first year, and you have five different currencies and
you have to be able to bring all of that
back to the variety, the size and the grower that
grew it. And it was just that. Basically for me,
it was always about problem solving. It was like a
big jigsaw and a big challenge to figure out how
(05:39):
to do that, and those kind of things always back
then were the things that kind of motivated me, I suppose.
So that's that's probably the foundation of where I came from.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
And written down problem solving just before you said it,
because I was thinking about, you know, you're in this
sort of business. You've been asked to work for an
accounting firm, and I'm just thinking about the characteristics that
you must have displayed in order to get those opportunities,
And the first one that came up was problem solving.
But I'm sure that there are others. So I'm interested
(06:14):
in what characteristics or what things do you need to
use to learn and grow and become someone who is
in a position to get the kind of position I
suppose to where you are now, and what did that
journey look like for you.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
The JUNI for me was like I said, it was
a male dominated environment. You had to be reasonably thick skinned.
You had to you know my time. You did have
to know your place. You earned your stripes, and not
being offended was a big thing where you learned to
(06:54):
separate work from you. And what I mean by that
is that if someone was unhappy or criticizing you for
something that you might be doing in your work role,
that that was just that right, that was my job,
and if they didn't like it, then my job was
to try and correct it, make it better, improve it.
(07:17):
Being open to learn, So I think the fact that
every opportunity that presented itself did mean I had to
learn something new and enjoying that, so that desire to
want to continue learning all of the time, even now
the days that I learned something new, I think my
staff sometimes look at me like I'm a little bit weird.
(07:38):
Because I'll be excited and I'll say, oh my god,
I learned something new today, Because I do think you
should spend your whole life channel learn.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You've mentioned male dominated industry quite a lot, and this
has been a theme for some of the conversations that
we've had recently, interested in your perception on how things
may or may not have changed over your years and
experience in the industry.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
It's changed a lot. That's changed a huge amount in
a very short time. So when I was cheer of
Apples and peers and towards the end of my tenure,
which I think was about twenty eighteen twenty seventeen, because
I went into the honey Manuka honey sector for a
while and at that time there was a bit of
(08:22):
drive from a few women in the sector because it
was still relatively male weighted, wanting to get woman in
horticulture going, and it was a big focus point for
them to get that going, which I think is fantastic.
But at the time, again I kind of I was
moving to a different environment, so I wasn't heavily involved
in that at the time. Now, being back here, I
(08:46):
lock around my staff and if someone had said to
me five years ago. Yep, five years ago, you will
have a predominantly female staff. I would have gone no
way for myself as much as anything that I wouldn't
have thought that would be the case. And today my
not by design at all, just purely by capability. My
(09:07):
whole senior leadership team this woman that has its challenges
some days, but generally it's really good.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
And we stoked to hear that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yeah, we are stuck to hear that because.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's not always the case across sectors, and certainly not
in the red meat industry. That's still got a lot
of challenges to overcome. So that's yeah, that's pretty interesting.
But like you say, I can imagine that would bring
challenges of its own with it as well.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I think it's not so much in the team, it's
more perception. So perceptions still exist, you know. Yeah, my
team's great. I wouldn't change them for the world, and
I'd do it all again, But the perception sometimes people
kind of think, oh, she's a woman, so that's why
she's got woman. That is not the case. They were
the best people for the job by far. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Absolutely, I guess I've got a question for you around
how you have practically got some of the roles. So
we talked about those formative years, those early years, and
then we've skipped apart where you're occasionally talking about being
the chair of the Apple and Pierre board for example,
and then you know your role with Minoka Honey tell
(10:19):
us about I guess the mindset change and the practical
skills that you had to develop before, you know, in
those early to mid years, before you know the period
that you're in now.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
So taking on the role of chair of New Zealand
Apples and Pears at the time was when the sector
was probably going through close to its bottom. It had
a really tough time post global Financial Crisis two thousand
and eight that lingered on for a while and seven Joyce,
(10:51):
who's just put his book out, was referring to us
at the time as the sunset industry. And so we
had a board that had formed around the time of
deregulation and I got invited to join that board as
a director when one of the directors was leaving the
country and going off shore to do some work, and
(11:13):
so they were filling a role and they gave me
a call and said, you know what, I consider this role,
and at the time, yeah, like I say, an opportunity presented,
and yes, it was going to be tough from a
work perspective because I had my own export company at
the time with a business partner, So by me committing
to something like that was going to put a reasonable
(11:33):
strain on our business, potentially with my absence. But we
talked about it and he said, no, you've got to
go after this. You've got to do it. It'd be
good for you to be good for the industry. So
I took that on and then I wasn't in the
role that long twelve months, I think Max not even
when the CEO had a heart attack and the chair
(11:55):
had to resign because he had served ten years. So
the constitution stated that you could only do five years
five terms of two years, so no one could foresee
that we would have to change a cheer and a
CEE at the same time. That was not predicted, and
the other directors couldn't really take a cheer because they
(12:18):
were all coming up for their constitutional turnover. So there
was myself and one Grower director from way down south
in Central Otago that it came down to being the
only two that could have done the role. He had
slightly more time left on the board than the other directors,
but still it was only about two and a half
years or something. And I remember sitting there not quite
(12:40):
a year into the role, going, if you're really desperate,
I'm sure I could do it, because I just thought
that a cheer cheered the meeting, and that's what they did.
And I watched that every time I came to a meeting,
so it didn't look that difficult until the very day
that I sat in that cheer and had to convene
the very first meeting and thought, now, what does he say?
(13:02):
So I learned very quickly that that was a flawed
thinking process, that a chair actually does a hell of
a lot. And I think I was about twenty nine
at the time, thirty I was young, young enough to
be criticized. I know, maybe I was a bit older.
Actually I might have been late thirties. I don't know.
I was in the minds of all of these males.
(13:22):
I was not a grower, so it was the first
time that it had never been a grower as cheer
was an exporter. I was female and young in their
minds and Osmari, so every possible negative was on the
table for them, and they certainly went backward and making
it clear that I should not make a mistake and
(13:46):
balls things up, I suppose for lack of a description,
but what I was fortunate to do was have a mentor.
When I became a director. I was very lucky to
have a person in my life I knew who had
been in the primary industry for a very long time
and was a very well regarded director in his own
(14:06):
right for a number of years, and so I was
able to go to him and say, Hey, I need
some help, I need some guidance. And when I told
him what I was going through at board meetings and
how it was tough, he would literally sit and we
would role play and he would say, when you go
back to the next board meeting, do this and do that.
(14:27):
Because there was a bit of a habit at the
time that that board tended to have a strong group
who would often decide the outcomes of meetings prior to
the meeting. And I needed to stop that and circumvent
that happening because that's not good governance and it wasn't
the purpose of it. So yeah, we with my mentor
(14:49):
and I worked through that and how to do it,
and it just took time. It took time to earn
my stripes, to prove myself. I also had the challenge
of having a new and it was Ce who came
in from out of industry, so he had no experience
of horticulture or agree for that matter. He was a
(15:11):
true blue town person from christ Church. So again with
very clear instructions not to balls it up and make
sure that he found his feet. Then I had to
get on with that as well. So I was really
lucky though, because because of my job, because I was
an exporter and I was heavily involved in a reasonably
(15:34):
vertically integrated environment, I could use all of that to
teach him, and we did. We learned together to some degree.
We spent a lot of time together. And yeah, I
think it's just that whole not being afraid. You know,
I certainly made mistakes, but it was owning those mistakes.
It was being a bit bold. That sector didn't have
a strategy at the time, and I found that a
(15:54):
bit frustrating. So between the Sea and I, we developed
a strategy which was a taste for the future. Was
it was bold at the time. We were a three
hundred and fifty million dollar sector because we were in
tough times and the strategy was to be a billion
dollars by twenty twenty two. I think it was twenty
(16:17):
twenty two, and at the same time the government had
announced the Business Growth Agenda of doubling export value by
twenty twenty five. I think it was so. Yeah, So
we threw out a strategy that got a lot of
criticism from the sector and a number of our older,
stale wart participants and members to say, you know, what
(16:40):
are you thinking of billion dollars? You're on cannabis or something.
But it had to be aspiration, all right, otherwise why
do it? Yeah, we went about that and when I
left the cheer in twenty eighteen, we'd hit eight hundred
and thirty million and we were the fastest sector to
double export value. We had a parliamentary celebration of that. So,
(17:06):
I mean, to be fair, I mean that was a
massive team. There was a lot, there was a lot
of reasons that that was able to happen. It wasn't
me entirely, but when you lead the sector you do
get a bit of kudos in that space. But it
was one hundred and fifty percent a whole lot of circumstances, events,
(17:26):
great people, great team and I'm a big, big believer
and as they say, you don't have to be the
most intelligent person in the room, surround yourself with great people,
and I have always done that and believe that to
be absolutely true.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Yeah, So what I'm kind of pondering is you're talking
about this very practical governance journey and the challenges that
you face, So thank you for sharing that, by the way,
But what I'm thinking about is, you know, we've got
a lot of young people who maybe want to get
into the governance space or even into senior leadership ssitions eventually,
and they potentially don't know where their value lies, but
(18:05):
they do have value, and they're thinking about how actually
do I communicate this value?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And as women were often.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Maybe a little bit in confident or not particularly good
at getting that across. So I'm just I'm curious as
to how you actually kind of communicate that value, Like,
how do you go about that? How do you say, actually,
you know what, I want to start putting my hand
out for some of these positions. I want to grow
my skills.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
What sort of advice would you give in that space.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I'm going to be reasonably brutal because I think it's
important that we are clear about expectations and reality. So
something I'm seeing a lot of at the moment which
concerns me, and probably because I've got children and you
know that age group coming through. I started young, but
(18:56):
I started everything young, you know what I mean, Like
I didn't. I didn't the way that my children have
grown up and their development and evolution was very different
to mine because we were my generation. I think when
I hit seventh form or year thirteen, there were seven students,
right that wasn't normal to go through and then to
(19:19):
go on to university. And I think halfway through my
seventh form, my year, my mother said to me, this
is just stupid. You're wasting time. You're wasting my time,
everybody's time, you know, ra rah, Because I changed my
subjects every year and I was having a good time.
So she decided that, you know, I was mucking around
and I needed to go out and get a real job,
because that's what we did back then. We didn't go
(19:40):
to UNI. It wasn't just a I mean, every one
of those of those seven students that were in my year,
I think five of them went to teacher's college and
two went to university, you know what I mean. So
it wasn't the norm. And I can't remember. I know
that I was young, I had a boyfriend who was older.
(20:01):
Sport was but pretty important to me, and I was
young for my age. In year thirteen, I was still
only seventeen, so I was the youngest in my family.
I had worked because of my parents' job. I could work,
I could make money and I did and I had
so I don't know. Halfway through my seventh form year
(20:24):
thought yep, she's been a pain and I don't really
need to put up with us, So I'm going to
England and got on a plane and we went to
England with four rugby players to play rugby at the
Harlequins in London. But I grew up in pubs so
I could pour pints. So I went in poured pints
in London and under age illegally because no one ever
(20:45):
asked to see any proof of how old I was.
So I went off and did that. And I was
going to spend you know a few years over there
and find myself and away for my mother. But that
didn't happen. Because the guy I was worth had quite
a bad injury in rugby and we ended up coming
back to New Zealand after about six or seven months,
and then I thought, I'm not going home to my mother.
(21:05):
I'm going to go off and you know, I don't know,
conquer the world and growing up around farmers, growing up
in the pub as I did. The guy I went
with was a farmer's son, and when we got back,
I was like, ah, I can do this farming thing,
and so gave it a go. And to the two
hear from a number of people that you'll never succeed.
(21:27):
You're a pretty little town girl who won't handle cowsheads
and you know, cow minur and all those kind of things.
So that just made me more determined to prove them
all wrong. And I did go farming, and I did
become an ab technician and did all of those things
just to prove people wrong, which as I've grown up
(21:48):
and matured, realized that was really a silly strategy. But
what it did is it taught me to be resilient, right,
And that's one of the big keys is that if
you can be resilient and you can take the knots
and take the criticisms. If you're being bold and make
mistakes and learn from them, it's quite invaluable. And I
(22:08):
think what I worry about, if I'm honest, these days
with younger people, is that it's whatever's changed, it has changed,
and you don't have the same opportunities or the same
you don't have the same opportunities to learn those levels
of resilience. We pott and wooled you more. You know,
(22:29):
your jungle gyms had crash mats under them. You weren't
allowed to climb trees. You didn't get to. I mean
I was riding motorbikes at like eight years old. I
was driving cars illegally before I have my license because
country kids could do those things. And that is all changed,
all of that. I could drive tractors, I could do
all of those things that kids don't get to do
(22:51):
the same today because we prevent all of these accents
for the right reason, but it alter's behaviors. And so
what I get worried about now for young people, and
I'm watching it happen, as we know, have winners of Ahafenawa,
(23:11):
we have winners of Young Growl competitions, we have winners
of young farmers, and then we project or propel them
out into the world and we say, this is going
to give you all of these opportunities, it is going
to open doors for you, it's going to do these
great things. And then twelve months after the event, they
sit there deflated as the next one it gets and
now it's going. All that did was give me twelve
(23:34):
months of meeting people extra work. Yeah, cool, I got
to go to some environments and see some things. But
tomorrow I go back to being who I was twelve
months ago. And so I think there is not enough
focus on what do these young people want, when do
(23:54):
they want it? And then what is the pathway? Because
if you can't show them a pathway and you can't
show them what the realities are along the way. I mean,
my mentor was brutal on me. You know, you can't
remember how old it was, at what stage it was,
but I took on a number of directorships at different times.
A lot happened for me in a reasonably you know,
(24:18):
in a ten to fifteen year window where the workloads
when you're trying to balance family and work and everything
else was at times I thought completely unsustainable. And he
would say to me, then make the choice, make the
choice of what you want. If you think you can't
have it at all, then pick which way you're going
(24:39):
to go, and go and don't question it. And he
was right. You know, I was lucky. I had a
very supportive husband and I still do. He was the
primary caregiver for a number of reasons. But I could
only do that because he was that So they had
(25:01):
to be a joint decision, right. And now I see
more and more for young people that they're both trying
to achieve it, and it's hard. You can't necessarily always
both achieve it unless you've got the benefit of family support.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Family family support or a sugar daddy best and you know,
the support systems that you that you need if you're
both trying to you know, go hard in your careers
and have.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
A family and raise them not to be psychopaths at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I think you've touched on some really important comments there.
And one of the things that have been thinking about
for a while now is perhaps is that generation a
little bit not I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
If hard enough is the right word.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's probably not the right phrase, but you touched on
up probably with the terminology resilience and grit. And so
is there a way that we can be communicating this
or what would what would some steps be for someone
to develop that? Is it just having a go at everything,
being prepared to be knocked down, make those quick, fast
(26:15):
mistakes and learn from them. How would someone develop that
sense of grit and this new environment where making mistakes
isn't necessarily perhaps what some people either want to do
or is told is okay behavior.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
I think yep, definitely be prepared to be knocked down
without a doubt, whether it's by sadly here is or
you know people that you think won't because New Zealand
we're in notorous with tall poppy, we just are. Yeah,
fast mistakes is okay. I think a big problem is
(26:57):
worrying about fitting at all in you know, I look
at lots of young people when my daughter's the same.
You know, she's twenty six and like in this big panic.
Now you know by twenty six, mum you had done this,
you had Matthew, you were doing this, you do the
world was different. We are not comparable. I didn't go
(27:19):
off to UNI straight away. I studied extermily. It was
just different, right, So you can't kind of compare, and
you shouldn't, and that is the problem. We spend so
much time comparing ourselves, if not to our parents and
previous generations, to our peers. Be happy, make a decision
for yourself and your own family, and be happy with that. Don't.
(27:43):
I've never worried about what my title is. I couldn't
care less of film, a CEO or not. I focus
on what my role is and what I'm doing and
does that make me feel good? Is that feeding you
know my needs and my desires, and that's it. I've
(28:04):
never I've always said to my kids and to other people,
do not be driven by money. Money should be a
outcome of a wholesome and fulfilling career. It shouldn't be
your core focus of why you're doing something. So I
think it's just about really setting the right parameters in
your own head. Resilience is only at its optimum when
(28:30):
you're in a position to not care too much. You
know what I mean. And that's why I said earlier
about workers work. It's important and it drives a lot
of people, and it drives me. But at the end
of the day, when I go home, so long as
you know. I've had some interesting things in media over
(28:51):
the years about me and functions and different things. And
I do remember my daughter ringing me one day, going,
oh my god, Mom, I just read the news, you know,
blah blah blah blah blah. And I said, so, what
do you think, you know, what do you think? She goes, Oh,
it's ridiculous. I don't believe it. But how do you know?
Are you okay?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
To me?
Speaker 4 (29:13):
I'm like, I am fine, I said. And the very point,
so long as you and Dad and Matthew know I'm
all good, that's all it really matters. It doesn't matter.
The rest of the world will never know me like
you know me, and that's reality. So and I don't
want them to. Really, So long as the people that
(29:33):
you rate is the most important to you, know you
and understand you. That is the core to resilience. The
rest is just proful. You know. It's funny. Same thing.
I look at Facebook or Instagram, will snapschat or whatever
they are now, and originally Facebook, you know, with my
kids and they had on a five hundred or a
(29:54):
thousand friends, and I'm like, don't be ridiculous, you don't
have five hundred or a thousand friends, all of and
all reality have probably a dozen, you know, half a
dozen really good friends. That's it. You have acquaintances, you
have people you network with, you have people that you
interact with for work and all of these other things.
(30:14):
But friends is a different definition. Family is a different definition.
So define those in your own mind, and then that
is what will help you be resilient. All the rest
doesn't matter. Pictures on Facebook, pictures on social media, photos,
and paper media is sort of releases in paper. So
(30:37):
long as people know you that matter and know that
that's not right or is right or whatever, it's all
that matters.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
Yeah, And I think as soon as we've been in
the comparison generation now for a wee while, I think, yeah,
hopefully that is maybe just a phase or it will
evolve into something else over time. But I've had a
really big question that's been brewing in my mind for
about five minutes, and it's about impact, because it feels
to me like, you know, you've talked about your money
(31:06):
being an outcome, You've talked about doing the role that
you're there to do, and I'm thinking about the dean
on the brink of retirement and what she might like
to have achieved. And I'm interested in your thoughts around
us because you've had big roles in the sector, You've
had a lot of influence in the sector, and yeah,
I wonder if you'd share your thoughts on what that
(31:27):
might look like for you between now and whenever that
is you've decided to not.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
That's not what we're saying, by.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
The way, I know I've been saying it quite publicly,
so that's okay. I've been getting a hard time about
saying that publicly. I think for me, again, I've never
it's never been about me going I'm making an impact,
I'm making a change because I like to problem solve
because it's one of my sort of core fundamental parts
(31:59):
of me. I like to look at things.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
You know.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Strong Wall Action Group was one of the groups I
was involved in because there was a problem in the sector,
you know, and all of those kind of things, and
I just like to try and find the solution, you know.
So I'm not worried about whether it's my solution or
it's someone else's solution. If we can put great minds
together and come up with something that's meaningful and can
(32:26):
help a greater group of people. That's all it's about,
you know, it's about It's not my team. I don't know.
Some days, I just I often want to say to them,
do I do their heads in? This my style of
management because I do a big believer in empowering other people.
Like I said before, you shouldn't need to know everything.
You shouldn't think you're the most intelligent person in the room.
(32:48):
Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, and know when
to speak to something, to a topic, but also know
when to go So actually, I'm going to hand this
over to Michelle or I'm going to hand this over
to Rebecca, because they are the expert subject matter experts,
not me. I'm just the figurehead to it all. My
(33:11):
job is to have the network that can open the
doors to have the conversations. My job is to have
the relationships where when they're not getting the cut through
at the level they need, I can message a minister
or message whoever will actually be able to drive the
change or at least to make sure the conversation has
(33:34):
had rather than just throw it to the side because
it's stuck somewhere, particularly in government. When you're around government
it is very hierarchical, it is very big. And you know,
if you look at horticulture, our ratio of staff to
government staff and just four ministries, just the four key
(33:56):
ministries we deal with being MPIMB, M FAT and Ministry
for Environment is one to one hundred and seventy six.
So we have to be able to cut through sometimes
what am I going to do? How am I going
to retire? I think that the change and speed of
(34:19):
growth at the moment, so we're going through what I
think is particularly if you look at AI and other
things coming in, it is going to continue to be
an exponential growth rate and change for every sector. But
agrees right up there. My job, I suppose and how
I should help an influence going forward is going to
(34:41):
be making sure that things are well set up for
the next generation. And I'm trust me, I'm grappling with
that a little bit because the molds change and the
challenge and I'll be happy for anyone to contact me
and tell me the answer on this one is that
you've still got a group of growers and farmers who
are all about but getting up with the sun, going
(35:02):
to bed with the sun, so to speak. But you
know what I mean, they are hard, long day workers.
They're seven days a week often and they that just
it's their life. They live on the farms, they live
on the orchards. They live and breath that. It's not
like a government person who goes to work at nine o'clock,
leaves work at four o'clock and goes home and separates
(35:24):
their mind from their work. Our guys live and breath
that every single day. And that's really hard to educate
government to that. And so as in my team in
this industry body stuff, I've got to find people and
educate people to be those translators between government and our
(35:46):
farmers because if you can't get good translators, the settings
and the environment for our girls and farmers are just
not going to get better. And it's actually a really
tough one because I know that the environment's also got
to facilitate the work life balance that younger people want
these days that I know my son looks at my
(36:07):
husband like what often goes, why are you guys doing this?
Why do you do what you do? You know, this
is just ridiculous. But he's not a farmer, he's not
an agri person, So I don't know's I'm still thinking
about that one clear. So yeah, I think I'm seeing
(36:29):
a lot of people go offshore, and it worries me
in that generation as well, because as long as you
guys aren't coming through right, we have to hang on
a little bit longer. So that's not ideal. Just for
the record, it's true.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Succession does depend on fresh blood coming in right, and.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
It does, but into a safe environment. And that's what
worries me because to your point earlier about young ones
coming through and wanting to get into governance, I've got
no problem with that. That's really good. But I do
think that we underrate or don't think enough about what
(37:10):
that means, because I'd love to have some forums or
some sessions with young people to ask why why do
they desire that? What is the thinking? Because the reality
is true governance when you start to get into it
has some very very heavy and high risk stakes attached
to it in terms of liabilities and things like that,
(37:33):
and so you have to have the capacity. You know,
at mail Palstale, my god, it's you know, that's real.
It was a real thing. But it was a real
thing because they were the only people who had the
time the time and the space to make sure, and
I mean a number of them have still got it
wrong to not get into trouble, right, And if you
(37:55):
look at some of the cases in the last five
years where directors have got it really wrong, and they
are professional directors, the liability personally is substantial. That is
something that probably would have quite a career impacting effect
on you personally, but also limiting in terms of what
you can do in your day job. Yeah, it's not
(38:16):
as glamorous as we always necessarily betray. I would rather
see that younger people get the opportunity to participate as
associates without the liability and the risks.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Great comments there, and I like your idea of this
forum right because I think there'd be so many insights
that would come from that. And I do wonder if
maybe some of the questioning around governance coming through from
younger people lies with just wanting to speed out the
pace of change quite simply.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Maybe that's where it comes from. I don't know, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
That's a valid that's valid. I can understand that. And
that's why I think having that ability to sit there
without the risks and liabilit is important because they would
see then why things are slow. And things are slow
because people are having to take risks personally and carry
liabilities personally if it goes wrong. That always sharpens your
(39:14):
judgment and your decision making process. Government's slow, and that's
slow because it's ridiculous, not for that liability sort of, Well,
it is to be fair if you look through government
agencies and ministries. The best way to get promoted is
to not make a bad decision. So the best way
not to make a bad decision is don't make a decision.
(39:36):
Whereas I'm the opposite. The best way to learn is
to make a mistake. Quite often, to make mistake, but
just learn from it. Right, we're a pole opposite scenario.
How do we fix that?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
But questions, and I guess my last one is before
we wrap this up, you talked about some career pivotal
moments and I'm guessing the GFC and when you stepped
into certain roles around the regulation time, I'm going to
hazard a guess the cyclone.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
It's probably just another, you know, one of those times.
Can you.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Just from your perspective talk about how it's been for you,
obviously with a mind of service and you are representing
the growers, But how have you handled the pressure?
Speaker 4 (40:25):
When you get older, you learn to compartmentalize better, so
to be fair, knowing what your drivers are is probably
the most important thing. And my driver's always been that
I want I care, So I do care, even though
people some people might think I don't care about much.
(40:46):
I care quite deeply about a lot of things, and
I care a lot about that. Ultimately, if I step
right back holistically, I care a lot about New Zealand
and New Zealand's future. I've got kids, I've now got
a grand as well to consider, and so I don't
want them growing up in a country that is horrendous, right.
(41:06):
That's probably what keeps me here in a capacity that's
probably a little bit bigger than I would like it
to be. At the stage of my life, I could
probably quite happyly drink a few more cocktails on a
Pacific island somewhere, but I don't think that's going to
happen in the next five to ten years. But that's
(41:28):
my core driver at the bottom of it is that
I do want New Zealand to be a fantastic place
for us to be able to, you know, live and
grow up in for future generations. But then when I
break that down to my day job in this role,
I do care really deeply about my growers and the
(41:48):
challenges they face on a daily basis, and I know
it's very real for them and that often they carry
a lot of burdens to you know, when I look
around over the last couple of years, I have been
around long enough to witness and to become quite close
to a few who I think are suffering from the
(42:08):
burden of legacy syndrome in terms of many around my
age or a little bit younger who are second or
third generation and feel this massive burden of these family
businesses to carry on and feel that if they don't,
they've failed. So when I talked to you guys earlier
(42:32):
and said for me, you know, I look at it
as my immediate family, well they're doing the same. But
for them that comes with that tie of the business
they can't get away from. For me, I can always
at the end of my day go home and go
(42:53):
I tried my best today. Did I make a difference?
Yes or no? Because I don't know. There's lots of
them out there. For me, I've got four thousand I
think it's two hundred girls or something. Now you can't
remember the number of the top of my head, but
of them, at least probably three thousand are stuck in
some kind of vortex, often of not being able to
(43:18):
find the way out. I don't carry that monkey, you know,
I don't have that. So yeah, my job is to
try and help them as much as possible. And you know,
some people say to me year, but they've got to
help themselves, and that is true. And I have seen
some people where, you know, I might have said to
(43:38):
them seven or eight years ago, maybe you should think about,
you know, changing your career options or where you're at.
But it's easy for me to say, right, because I
don't carry the burden that they carry. And it's a
big it's a big step. I can't even imagine what
(43:58):
that step would be like for some of those guys
to have to make that decision. And in fact, I
had a meeting with a grower at my conference who
said exactly that to me. He said, I am not
going to burden my children with this. He said, just
because I've been successful in this business does not mean
because their surname is the same as mine, they will
be as successful as me. He is the first and
(44:21):
only grower that I've ever come across who articulated it
like that, and I was stoked. I mean, because he
has a very big, very successful business and he's not
gonna burden his kids with it and he's made that
conscious decision, and shit, I wish others could do that.
(44:41):
But it's not that easy sometimes, right, So that's my
job to try and make that better for them. It's
not easy, and I don't ever expect that they understand it,
because they shouldn't. My job is to try and allow
them to be the best growers in the world and
to get on with doing what they do. But again,
there's been so much change over to the last decade
(45:03):
and a half that now we have to kind of
bring them closer to what happens here in Wellington and
why we can't make those changes or why we can,
and what's driving that so they at least have an understanding.
But it's hard. It's a lot. You know that they're
trying to do more than a full day job growing
(45:24):
and farming, and now we're trying to say, oh, and
by the way, can you also have an awareness of
all of this other stuff? I don't know, maybe getting
back to being a team of five thousand in horticulture
and you know, working together. I don't know. I don't
want to sound like to send to God forbid, but
just saying, you know, conceptually there's a merit in that somehow,
(45:48):
and I don't Maybe that's our next evolution, right, Maybe
that's where the next generation because I am you know
if you think, I think at average age is sixty eight,
you know.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Eight?
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Come on, you know, I love that to be forty something.
And it's not until we get that, when we have
that generational shift, that you'll get that new change of thinking.
But it hasn't been able to change because those guys
are still working in the businesses. Right. My shit, Convan
(46:22):
Will I think is I don't know, he must be
getting close to ninety and he still goes out and
frost frosts and you know, grows fruit and works every day.
I know a number of our growers in their seventies
and eighties, who do how do you change that? How
do you create the environment? And I know it's hard
because they've got kids, you know, my age or slightly younger.
(46:45):
Frustrated because you know, there's that tension. You need to
move on, you know, I can't because I can't, you know.
So yeah, yeah, it's agre New Zealand, right and we
love it, Yeah we do.
Speaker 5 (46:58):
And honestly, I just want to take a bit of
a moment, because we have been through a bit of
a journey in the last hour or so, just to
say thank you so much for being such an incredible
leader in our industry, not only in the role that
you're in at the moment, but this uning that we've
been through, that we've talked through this afternoon has been
(47:21):
pretty incredible and I just want to really honor you
for that work that you've done over the years, and
thank you as well for being part of our podcast
and sharing some of your insights really honestly with us
and with our listeners and for those of us that
were a woman of New Zealand, where we're always looking
for wonderful women to bring into our fold and we're
(47:42):
really grateful to have to have you as part of
one of us.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
Thank you, no, thank you guys as well. And I mean,
if there's anything we can ever do is all endzed,
We're happy to help you know, we do really want
to figure out how to help the next generation and
provide a really safe opportunity for them to come through.
So if you have any great ideas, we'll love to hear.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yes, thank you so much, And just to echo clears points,
just I love your bluntness.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
I know you talked about this at the start.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
You're like, oh, I'm gonna be blunt here, but excellence
is so great, So thank you.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
So, if you've enjoyed this chat and the others that
we've held were fantastic real women, then.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Please support us by joining the fold.
Speaker 5 (48:28):
Just see to our website Rural womaninzied dot in zed
or check out the show notes. Sign up and be
part of shaping future generations for women in rural New Zealand.
Welcome to the Black Heels and Tractor Wheels podcast, where
we are sharing stories from a range of women from
around New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For nearly a century, Rural Women New Zealand has been
dedicated to strengthening and supporting women and children to become
empowered members of their communities.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
We hope that by hearing these stories from inspiring women
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Speaker 2 (00:21):
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so you don't miss our rural stories.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
The way that we've been starting these conversations is just
trying to understand a little bit more about you and
your background. And the question really is is what do
we need to know about you that has shaped you
to who you are?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Now? What's a bit of your background that we need
to really understand.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
I joined the sector a long time ago. Now, I've
been around primary all my life, so I grew up
in I was born in Hawk's Bay, but then also
rural Taranaki. Both older sisters married farmers, one pastor, one dairy,
so I've been around farming for most of my life.
(01:12):
Really most of my formative years, but didn't grow up
as a farmer's child. My parents were local publicans actually,
so yes, I got the exposure of hearing all of
the problems and challenges that farmers faced from quite a
young age. When I got into my own sort of career,
I went, I was sent to boarding school in New Plymouth,
(01:35):
again predominantly farmer's children, hearing all of the challenges that
they faced as we were in our teenage years. And
so when I left school, I think, I suppose the
biggest thing is I always just took every opportunity that
was presented. So I for door opened and the time
was allowed me to do something, I would generally take
(01:58):
the opportunity. Think that I was brought up in quite
a male dominated environment. And my eldest is thirty something
and my daughter's twenty six, so I was of that
ariostole where, you know, woman probably didn't do all of
the things traditionally though, you know, stayed at home and
(02:20):
fed the sharers and cooked and did all of those things.
But I loved motorbikes and tractors and all of those things.
So the only way to have a heavy involvement, and
that was to be more physically involved. So I did haymaking,
I did silage making, I drove tractors, and I rode motorbikes.
So that's kind of what shaped me, I suppose, the
(02:41):
love of all of that. And yeah, then when I
got into horticulture back in two thousand, I moved to Nelson.
Actually I was married with my children and husband and
we moved to Nelson. The intent was I was supposed
to take a year off actually because I was to
stay at home and bemum cook and do all those
(03:03):
wonderful things. And I think it lasted about six weeks
where my daughter was like, this is not going to work,
and I was like, this is not going to work,
and she wanted to go back to child here and
I wanted to go back to work. So I ended
up for a little while in the seafood sector. I
was working for a company who did liprono extraction from
greenland muscles, and then there was a year long contract
(03:25):
in while I was doing that, the accounting firm that
serviced that company ended up at the end of my
contract saying lot, come and work for us, would be
keen to have you work in our business development area
and that's what I did for a little while, again
quite rural being and Nelson Tasman at the time. Back
in two thousand and when I joined that company, it
(03:47):
was at the very start of the deregulation environment for
apples and pears, where enza was what it was back then,
or the New Zealand app on pearboard was a year
prior to deregulation, and I was in the accounting firm
doing business development when a group of orchids from down
there had got an export license to export a year
(04:09):
before deregulation, and so they came to the firm and
said would we manage that export license and run that
program for the year, and I got the job to
do that. It was tasked to me, so again as
opportunities present, I just sort of said, oh yeah, I'll
give that a go and the rest is pretty much history,
(04:31):
to be fair, because then it just tied me into
a sector in an industry that I've been in ever since.
And because I'd come from a rural background, really it
was new, so it was exciting. It was something different.
I've been you know, animals, not plants, and I enjoyed
that learning environment with deregulation I think the part I
(04:55):
love the most because I was in that finance background
with business development. I was excited by the prospect of
how do you take you know, twelve different varieties at
Apple's with twelve different what we call count sizes, so
from a small apple to a large you send them
to I think it was about thirty four countries in
(05:16):
that first year, and you have five different currencies and
you have to be able to bring all of that
back to the variety, the size and the grower that
grew it. And it was just that. Basically for me,
it was always about problem solving. It was like a
big jigsaw and a big challenge to figure out how
(05:39):
to do that, and those kind of things always back
then were the things that kind of motivated me, I suppose.
So that's that's probably the foundation of where I came from.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
And written down problem solving just before you said it,
because I was thinking about, you know, you're in this
sort of business. You've been asked to work for an
accounting firm, and I'm just thinking about the characteristics that
you must have displayed in order to get those opportunities,
And the first one that came up was problem solving.
But I'm sure that there are others. So I'm interested
(06:14):
in what characteristics or what things do you need to
use to learn and grow and become someone who is
in a position to get the kind of position I
suppose to where you are now, and what did that
journey look like for you.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
The JUNI for me was like I said, it was
a male dominated environment. You had to be reasonably thick skinned.
You had to you know my time. You did have
to know your place. You earned your stripes, and not
being offended was a big thing where you learned to
(06:54):
separate work from you. And what I mean by that
is that if someone was unhappy or criticizing you for
something that you might be doing in your work role,
that that was just that right, that was my job,
and if they didn't like it, then my job was
to try and correct it, make it better, improve it.
(07:17):
Being open to learn, So I think the fact that
every opportunity that presented itself did mean I had to
learn something new and enjoying that, so that desire to
want to continue learning all of the time, even now
the days that I learned something new, I think my
staff sometimes look at me like I'm a little bit weird.
(07:38):
Because I'll be excited and I'll say, oh my god,
I learned something new today, Because I do think you
should spend your whole life channel learn.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You've mentioned male dominated industry quite a lot, and this
has been a theme for some of the conversations that
we've had recently, interested in your perception on how things
may or may not have changed over your years and
experience in the industry.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
It's changed a lot. That's changed a huge amount in
a very short time. So when I was cheer of
Apples and peers and towards the end of my tenure,
which I think was about twenty eighteen twenty seventeen, because
I went into the honey Manuka honey sector for a
while and at that time there was a bit of
(08:22):
drive from a few women in the sector because it
was still relatively male weighted, wanting to get woman in
horticulture going, and it was a big focus point for
them to get that going, which I think is fantastic.
But at the time, again I kind of I was
moving to a different environment, so I wasn't heavily involved
in that at the time. Now, being back here, I
(08:46):
lock around my staff and if someone had said to
me five years ago. Yep, five years ago, you will
have a predominantly female staff. I would have gone no
way for myself as much as anything that I wouldn't
have thought that would be the case. And today my
not by design at all, just purely by capability. My
(09:07):
whole senior leadership team this woman that has its challenges
some days, but generally it's really good.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
And we stoked to hear that.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yeah, we are stuck to hear that because.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's not always the case across sectors, and certainly not
in the red meat industry. That's still got a lot
of challenges to overcome. So that's yeah, that's pretty interesting.
But like you say, I can imagine that would bring
challenges of its own with it as well.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I think it's not so much in the team, it's
more perception. So perceptions still exist, you know. Yeah, my
team's great. I wouldn't change them for the world, and
I'd do it all again, But the perception sometimes people
kind of think, oh, she's a woman, so that's why
she's got woman. That is not the case. They were
the best people for the job by far. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Absolutely, I guess I've got a question for you around
how you have practically got some of the roles. So
we talked about those formative years, those early years, and
then we've skipped apart where you're occasionally talking about being
the chair of the Apple and Pierre board for example,
and then you know your role with Minoka Honey tell
(10:19):
us about I guess the mindset change and the practical
skills that you had to develop before, you know, in
those early to mid years, before you know the period
that you're in now.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
So taking on the role of chair of New Zealand
Apples and Pears at the time was when the sector
was probably going through close to its bottom. It had
a really tough time post global Financial Crisis two thousand
and eight that lingered on for a while and seven Joyce,
(10:51):
who's just put his book out, was referring to us
at the time as the sunset industry. And so we
had a board that had formed around the time of
deregulation and I got invited to join that board as
a director when one of the directors was leaving the
country and going off shore to do some work, and
(11:13):
so they were filling a role and they gave me
a call and said, you know what, I consider this role,
and at the time, yeah, like I say, an opportunity presented,
and yes, it was going to be tough from a
work perspective because I had my own export company at
the time with a business partner, So by me committing
to something like that was going to put a reasonable
(11:33):
strain on our business, potentially with my absence. But we
talked about it and he said, no, you've got to
go after this. You've got to do it. It'd be
good for you to be good for the industry. So
I took that on and then I wasn't in the
role that long twelve months, I think Max not even
when the CEO had a heart attack and the chair
(11:55):
had to resign because he had served ten years. So
the constitution stated that you could only do five years
five terms of two years, so no one could foresee
that we would have to change a cheer and a
CEE at the same time. That was not predicted, and
the other directors couldn't really take a cheer because they
(12:18):
were all coming up for their constitutional turnover. So there
was myself and one Grower director from way down south
in Central Otago that it came down to being the
only two that could have done the role. He had
slightly more time left on the board than the other directors,
but still it was only about two and a half
years or something. And I remember sitting there not quite
(12:40):
a year into the role, going, if you're really desperate,
I'm sure I could do it, because I just thought
that a cheer cheered the meeting, and that's what they did.
And I watched that every time I came to a meeting,
so it didn't look that difficult until the very day
that I sat in that cheer and had to convene
the very first meeting and thought, now, what does he say?
(13:02):
So I learned very quickly that that was a flawed
thinking process, that a chair actually does a hell of
a lot. And I think I was about twenty nine
at the time, thirty I was young, young enough to
be criticized. I know, maybe I was a bit older.
Actually I might have been late thirties. I don't know.
I was in the minds of all of these males.
(13:22):
I was not a grower, so it was the first
time that it had never been a grower as cheer
was an exporter. I was female and young in their
minds and Osmari, so every possible negative was on the
table for them, and they certainly went backward and making
it clear that I should not make a mistake and
(13:46):
balls things up, I suppose for lack of a description,
but what I was fortunate to do was have a mentor.
When I became a director. I was very lucky to
have a person in my life I knew who had
been in the primary industry for a very long time
and was a very well regarded director in his own
(14:06):
right for a number of years, and so I was
able to go to him and say, Hey, I need
some help, I need some guidance. And when I told
him what I was going through at board meetings and
how it was tough, he would literally sit and we
would role play and he would say, when you go
back to the next board meeting, do this and do that.
(14:27):
Because there was a bit of a habit at the
time that that board tended to have a strong group
who would often decide the outcomes of meetings prior to
the meeting. And I needed to stop that and circumvent
that happening because that's not good governance and it wasn't
the purpose of it. So yeah, we with my mentor
(14:49):
and I worked through that and how to do it,
and it just took time. It took time to earn
my stripes, to prove myself. I also had the challenge
of having a new and it was Ce who came
in from out of industry, so he had no experience
of horticulture or agree for that matter. He was a
(15:11):
true blue town person from christ Church. So again with
very clear instructions not to balls it up and make
sure that he found his feet. Then I had to
get on with that as well. So I was really
lucky though, because because of my job, because I was
an exporter and I was heavily involved in a reasonably
(15:34):
vertically integrated environment, I could use all of that to
teach him, and we did. We learned together to some degree.
We spent a lot of time together. And yeah, I
think it's just that whole not being afraid. You know,
I certainly made mistakes, but it was owning those mistakes.
It was being a bit bold. That sector didn't have
a strategy at the time, and I found that a
(15:54):
bit frustrating. So between the Sea and I, we developed
a strategy which was a taste for the future. Was
it was bold at the time. We were a three
hundred and fifty million dollar sector because we were in
tough times and the strategy was to be a billion
dollars by twenty twenty two. I think it was twenty
(16:17):
twenty two, and at the same time the government had
announced the Business Growth Agenda of doubling export value by
twenty twenty five. I think it was so. Yeah, So
we threw out a strategy that got a lot of
criticism from the sector and a number of our older,
stale wart participants and members to say, you know, what
(16:40):
are you thinking of billion dollars? You're on cannabis or something.
But it had to be aspiration, all right, otherwise why
do it? Yeah, we went about that and when I
left the cheer in twenty eighteen, we'd hit eight hundred
and thirty million and we were the fastest sector to
double export value. We had a parliamentary celebration of that. So,
(17:06):
I mean, to be fair, I mean that was a
massive team. There was a lot, there was a lot
of reasons that that was able to happen. It wasn't
me entirely, but when you lead the sector you do
get a bit of kudos in that space. But it
was one hundred and fifty percent a whole lot of circumstances, events,
(17:26):
great people, great team and I'm a big, big believer
and as they say, you don't have to be the
most intelligent person in the room, surround yourself with great people,
and I have always done that and believe that to
be absolutely true.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
Yeah, So what I'm kind of pondering is you're talking
about this very practical governance journey and the challenges that
you face, So thank you for sharing that, by the way,
But what I'm thinking about is, you know, we've got
a lot of young people who maybe want to get
into the governance space or even into senior leadership ssitions eventually,
and they potentially don't know where their value lies, but
(18:05):
they do have value, and they're thinking about how actually
do I communicate this value?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And as women were often.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Maybe a little bit in confident or not particularly good
at getting that across. So I'm just I'm curious as
to how you actually kind of communicate that value, Like,
how do you go about that? How do you say, actually,
you know what, I want to start putting my hand
out for some of these positions. I want to grow
my skills.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
What sort of advice would you give in that space.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I'm going to be reasonably brutal because I think it's
important that we are clear about expectations and reality. So
something I'm seeing a lot of at the moment which
concerns me, and probably because I've got children and you
know that age group coming through. I started young, but
(18:56):
I started everything young, you know what I mean, Like
I didn't. I didn't the way that my children have
grown up and their development and evolution was very different
to mine because we were my generation. I think when
I hit seventh form or year thirteen, there were seven students,
right that wasn't normal to go through and then to
(19:19):
go on to university. And I think halfway through my
seventh form, my year, my mother said to me, this
is just stupid. You're wasting time. You're wasting my time,
everybody's time, you know, ra rah, Because I changed my
subjects every year and I was having a good time.
So she decided that, you know, I was mucking around
and I needed to go out and get a real job,
because that's what we did back then. We didn't go
(19:40):
to UNI. It wasn't just a I mean, every one
of those of those seven students that were in my year,
I think five of them went to teacher's college and
two went to university, you know what I mean. So
it wasn't the norm. And I can't remember. I know
that I was young, I had a boyfriend who was older.
(20:01):
Sport was but pretty important to me, and I was
young for my age. In year thirteen, I was still
only seventeen, so I was the youngest in my family.
I had worked because of my parents' job. I could work,
I could make money and I did and I had
so I don't know. Halfway through my seventh form year
(20:24):
thought yep, she's been a pain and I don't really
need to put up with us, So I'm going to
England and got on a plane and we went to
England with four rugby players to play rugby at the
Harlequins in London. But I grew up in pubs so
I could pour pints. So I went in poured pints
in London and under age illegally because no one ever
(20:45):
asked to see any proof of how old I was.
So I went off and did that. And I was
going to spend you know a few years over there
and find myself and away for my mother. But that
didn't happen. Because the guy I was worth had quite
a bad injury in rugby and we ended up coming
back to New Zealand after about six or seven months,
and then I thought, I'm not going home to my mother.
(21:05):
I'm going to go off and you know, I don't know,
conquer the world and growing up around farmers, growing up
in the pub as I did. The guy I went
with was a farmer's son, and when we got back,
I was like, ah, I can do this farming thing,
and so gave it a go. And to the two
hear from a number of people that you'll never succeed.
(21:27):
You're a pretty little town girl who won't handle cowsheads
and you know, cow minur and all those kind of things.
So that just made me more determined to prove them
all wrong. And I did go farming, and I did
become an ab technician and did all of those things
just to prove people wrong, which as I've grown up
(21:48):
and matured, realized that was really a silly strategy. But
what it did is it taught me to be resilient, right,
And that's one of the big keys is that if
you can be resilient and you can take the knots
and take the criticisms. If you're being bold and make
mistakes and learn from them, it's quite invaluable. And I
(22:08):
think what I worry about, if I'm honest, these days
with younger people, is that it's whatever's changed, it has changed,
and you don't have the same opportunities or the same
you don't have the same opportunities to learn those levels
of resilience. We pott and wooled you more. You know,
(22:29):
your jungle gyms had crash mats under them. You weren't
allowed to climb trees. You didn't get to. I mean
I was riding motorbikes at like eight years old. I
was driving cars illegally before I have my license because
country kids could do those things. And that is all changed,
all of that. I could drive tractors, I could do
all of those things that kids don't get to do
(22:51):
the same today because we prevent all of these accents
for the right reason, but it alter's behaviors. And so
what I get worried about now for young people, and
I'm watching it happen, as we know, have winners of Ahafenawa,
(23:11):
we have winners of Young Growl competitions, we have winners
of young farmers, and then we project or propel them
out into the world and we say, this is going
to give you all of these opportunities, it is going
to open doors for you, it's going to do these
great things. And then twelve months after the event, they
sit there deflated as the next one it gets and
now it's going. All that did was give me twelve
(23:34):
months of meeting people extra work. Yeah, cool, I got
to go to some environments and see some things. But
tomorrow I go back to being who I was twelve
months ago. And so I think there is not enough
focus on what do these young people want, when do
(23:54):
they want it? And then what is the pathway? Because
if you can't show them a pathway and you can't
show them what the realities are along the way. I mean,
my mentor was brutal on me. You know, you can't
remember how old it was, at what stage it was,
but I took on a number of directorships at different times.
A lot happened for me in a reasonably you know,
(24:18):
in a ten to fifteen year window where the workloads
when you're trying to balance family and work and everything
else was at times I thought completely unsustainable. And he
would say to me, then make the choice, make the
choice of what you want. If you think you can't
have it at all, then pick which way you're going
(24:39):
to go, and go and don't question it. And he
was right. You know, I was lucky. I had a
very supportive husband and I still do. He was the
primary caregiver for a number of reasons. But I could
only do that because he was that So they had
(25:01):
to be a joint decision, right. And now I see
more and more for young people that they're both trying
to achieve it, and it's hard. You can't necessarily always
both achieve it unless you've got the benefit of family support.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Family family support or a sugar daddy best and you know,
the support systems that you that you need if you're
both trying to you know, go hard in your careers
and have.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
A family and raise them not to be psychopaths at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
I think you've touched on some really important comments there.
And one of the things that have been thinking about
for a while now is perhaps is that generation a
little bit not I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
If hard enough is the right word.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's probably not the right phrase, but you touched on
up probably with the terminology resilience and grit. And so
is there a way that we can be communicating this
or what would what would some steps be for someone
to develop that? Is it just having a go at everything,
being prepared to be knocked down, make those quick, fast
(26:15):
mistakes and learn from them. How would someone develop that
sense of grit and this new environment where making mistakes
isn't necessarily perhaps what some people either want to do
or is told is okay behavior.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
I think yep, definitely be prepared to be knocked down
without a doubt, whether it's by sadly here is or
you know people that you think won't because New Zealand
we're in notorous with tall poppy, we just are. Yeah,
fast mistakes is okay. I think a big problem is
(26:57):
worrying about fitting at all in you know, I look
at lots of young people when my daughter's the same.
You know, she's twenty six and like in this big panic.
Now you know by twenty six, mum you had done this,
you had Matthew, you were doing this, you do the
world was different. We are not comparable. I didn't go
(27:19):
off to UNI straight away. I studied extermily. It was
just different, right, So you can't kind of compare, and
you shouldn't, and that is the problem. We spend so
much time comparing ourselves, if not to our parents and
previous generations, to our peers. Be happy, make a decision
for yourself and your own family, and be happy with that. Don't.
(27:43):
I've never worried about what my title is. I couldn't
care less of film, a CEO or not. I focus
on what my role is and what I'm doing and
does that make me feel good? Is that feeding you
know my needs and my desires, and that's it. I've
(28:04):
never I've always said to my kids and to other people,
do not be driven by money. Money should be a
outcome of a wholesome and fulfilling career. It shouldn't be
your core focus of why you're doing something. So I
think it's just about really setting the right parameters in
your own head. Resilience is only at its optimum when
(28:30):
you're in a position to not care too much. You
know what I mean. And that's why I said earlier
about workers work. It's important and it drives a lot
of people, and it drives me. But at the end
of the day, when I go home, so long as
you know. I've had some interesting things in media over
(28:51):
the years about me and functions and different things. And
I do remember my daughter ringing me one day, going,
oh my god, Mom, I just read the news, you know,
blah blah blah blah blah. And I said, so, what
do you think, you know, what do you think? She goes, Oh,
it's ridiculous. I don't believe it. But how do you know?
Are you okay?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
To me?
Speaker 4 (29:13):
I'm like, I am fine, I said. And the very point,
so long as you and Dad and Matthew know I'm
all good, that's all it really matters. It doesn't matter.
The rest of the world will never know me like
you know me, and that's reality. So and I don't
want them to. Really, So long as the people that
(29:33):
you rate is the most important to you, know you
and understand you. That is the core to resilience. The
rest is just proful. You know. It's funny. Same thing.
I look at Facebook or Instagram, will snapschat or whatever
they are now, and originally Facebook, you know, with my
kids and they had on a five hundred or a
(29:54):
thousand friends, and I'm like, don't be ridiculous, you don't
have five hundred or a thousand friends, all of and
all reality have probably a dozen, you know, half a
dozen really good friends. That's it. You have acquaintances, you
have people you network with, you have people that you
interact with for work and all of these other things.
(30:14):
But friends is a different definition. Family is a different definition.
So define those in your own mind, and then that
is what will help you be resilient. All the rest
doesn't matter. Pictures on Facebook, pictures on social media, photos,
and paper media is sort of releases in paper. So
(30:37):
long as people know you that matter and know that
that's not right or is right or whatever, it's all
that matters.
Speaker 5 (30:44):
Yeah, And I think as soon as we've been in
the comparison generation now for a wee while, I think, yeah,
hopefully that is maybe just a phase or it will
evolve into something else over time. But I've had a
really big question that's been brewing in my mind for
about five minutes, and it's about impact, because it feels
to me like, you know, you've talked about your money
(31:06):
being an outcome, You've talked about doing the role that
you're there to do, and I'm thinking about the dean
on the brink of retirement and what she might like
to have achieved. And I'm interested in your thoughts around
us because you've had big roles in the sector, You've
had a lot of influence in the sector, and yeah,
I wonder if you'd share your thoughts on what that
(31:27):
might look like for you between now and whenever that
is you've decided to not.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
That's not what we're saying, by.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
The way, I know I've been saying it quite publicly,
so that's okay. I've been getting a hard time about
saying that publicly. I think for me, again, I've never
it's never been about me going I'm making an impact,
I'm making a change because I like to problem solve
because it's one of my sort of core fundamental parts
(31:59):
of me. I like to look at things.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
You know.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
Strong Wall Action Group was one of the groups I
was involved in because there was a problem in the sector,
you know, and all of those kind of things, and
I just like to try and find the solution, you know.
So I'm not worried about whether it's my solution or
it's someone else's solution. If we can put great minds
together and come up with something that's meaningful and can
(32:26):
help a greater group of people. That's all it's about,
you know, it's about It's not my team. I don't know.
Some days, I just I often want to say to them,
do I do their heads in? This my style of
management because I do a big believer in empowering other people.
Like I said before, you shouldn't need to know everything.
You shouldn't think you're the most intelligent person in the room.
(32:48):
Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, and know when
to speak to something, to a topic, but also know
when to go So actually, I'm going to hand this
over to Michelle or I'm going to hand this over
to Rebecca, because they are the expert subject matter experts,
not me. I'm just the figurehead to it all. My
(33:11):
job is to have the network that can open the
doors to have the conversations. My job is to have
the relationships where when they're not getting the cut through
at the level they need, I can message a minister
or message whoever will actually be able to drive the
change or at least to make sure the conversation has
(33:34):
had rather than just throw it to the side because
it's stuck somewhere, particularly in government. When you're around government
it is very hierarchical, it is very big. And you know,
if you look at horticulture, our ratio of staff to
government staff and just four ministries, just the four key
(33:56):
ministries we deal with being MPIMB, M FAT and Ministry
for Environment is one to one hundred and seventy six.
So we have to be able to cut through sometimes
what am I going to do? How am I going
to retire? I think that the change and speed of
(34:19):
growth at the moment, so we're going through what I
think is particularly if you look at AI and other
things coming in, it is going to continue to be
an exponential growth rate and change for every sector. But
agrees right up there. My job, I suppose and how
I should help an influence going forward is going to
(34:41):
be making sure that things are well set up for
the next generation. And I'm trust me, I'm grappling with
that a little bit because the molds change and the
challenge and I'll be happy for anyone to contact me
and tell me the answer on this one is that
you've still got a group of growers and farmers who
are all about but getting up with the sun, going
(35:02):
to bed with the sun, so to speak. But you
know what I mean, they are hard, long day workers.
They're seven days a week often and they that just
it's their life. They live on the farms, they live
on the orchards. They live and breath that. It's not
like a government person who goes to work at nine o'clock,
leaves work at four o'clock and goes home and separates
(35:24):
their mind from their work. Our guys live and breath
that every single day. And that's really hard to educate
government to that. And so as in my team in
this industry body stuff, I've got to find people and
educate people to be those translators between government and our
(35:46):
farmers because if you can't get good translators, the settings
and the environment for our girls and farmers are just
not going to get better. And it's actually a really
tough one because I know that the environment's also got
to facilitate the work life balance that younger people want
these days that I know my son looks at my
(36:07):
husband like what often goes, why are you guys doing this?
Why do you do what you do? You know, this
is just ridiculous. But he's not a farmer, he's not
an agri person, So I don't know's I'm still thinking
about that one clear. So yeah, I think I'm seeing
(36:29):
a lot of people go offshore, and it worries me
in that generation as well, because as long as you
guys aren't coming through right, we have to hang on
a little bit longer. So that's not ideal. Just for
the record, it's true.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Succession does depend on fresh blood coming in right, and.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
It does, but into a safe environment. And that's what
worries me because to your point earlier about young ones
coming through and wanting to get into governance, I've got
no problem with that. That's really good. But I do
think that we underrate or don't think enough about what
(37:10):
that means, because I'd love to have some forums or
some sessions with young people to ask why why do
they desire that? What is the thinking? Because the reality
is true governance when you start to get into it
has some very very heavy and high risk stakes attached
to it in terms of liabilities and things like that,
(37:33):
and so you have to have the capacity. You know,
at mail Palstale, my god, it's you know, that's real.
It was a real thing. But it was a real
thing because they were the only people who had the
time the time and the space to make sure, and
I mean a number of them have still got it
wrong to not get into trouble, right, And if you
(37:55):
look at some of the cases in the last five
years where directors have got it really wrong, and they
are professional directors, the liability personally is substantial. That is
something that probably would have quite a career impacting effect
on you personally, but also limiting in terms of what
you can do in your day job. Yeah, it's not
(38:16):
as glamorous as we always necessarily betray. I would rather
see that younger people get the opportunity to participate as
associates without the liability and the risks.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Great comments there, and I like your idea of this
forum right because I think there'd be so many insights
that would come from that. And I do wonder if
maybe some of the questioning around governance coming through from
younger people lies with just wanting to speed out the
pace of change quite simply.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Maybe that's where it comes from. I don't know, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
That's a valid that's valid. I can understand that. And
that's why I think having that ability to sit there
without the risks and liabilit is important because they would
see then why things are slow. And things are slow
because people are having to take risks personally and carry
liabilities personally if it goes wrong. That always sharpens your
(39:14):
judgment and your decision making process. Government's slow, and that's
slow because it's ridiculous, not for that liability sort of, Well,
it is to be fair if you look through government
agencies and ministries. The best way to get promoted is
to not make a bad decision. So the best way
not to make a bad decision is don't make a decision.
(39:36):
Whereas I'm the opposite. The best way to learn is
to make a mistake. Quite often, to make mistake, but
just learn from it. Right, we're a pole opposite scenario.
How do we fix that?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
But questions, and I guess my last one is before
we wrap this up, you talked about some career pivotal
moments and I'm guessing the GFC and when you stepped
into certain roles around the regulation time, I'm going to
hazard a guess the cyclone.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
It's probably just another, you know, one of those times.
Can you.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Just from your perspective talk about how it's been for you,
obviously with a mind of service and you are representing
the growers, But how have you handled the pressure?
Speaker 4 (40:25):
When you get older, you learn to compartmentalize better, so
to be fair, knowing what your drivers are is probably
the most important thing. And my driver's always been that
I want I care, So I do care, even though
people some people might think I don't care about much.
(40:46):
I care quite deeply about a lot of things, and
I care a lot about that. Ultimately, if I step
right back holistically, I care a lot about New Zealand
and New Zealand's future. I've got kids, I've now got
a grand as well to consider, and so I don't
want them growing up in a country that is horrendous, right.
(41:06):
That's probably what keeps me here in a capacity that's
probably a little bit bigger than I would like it
to be. At the stage of my life, I could
probably quite happyly drink a few more cocktails on a
Pacific island somewhere, but I don't think that's going to
happen in the next five to ten years. But that's
(41:28):
my core driver at the bottom of it is that
I do want New Zealand to be a fantastic place
for us to be able to, you know, live and
grow up in for future generations. But then when I
break that down to my day job in this role,
I do care really deeply about my growers and the
(41:48):
challenges they face on a daily basis, and I know
it's very real for them and that often they carry
a lot of burdens to you know, when I look
around over the last couple of years, I have been
around long enough to witness and to become quite close
to a few who I think are suffering from the
(42:08):
burden of legacy syndrome in terms of many around my
age or a little bit younger who are second or
third generation and feel this massive burden of these family
businesses to carry on and feel that if they don't,
they've failed. So when I talked to you guys earlier
(42:32):
and said for me, you know, I look at it
as my immediate family, well they're doing the same. But
for them that comes with that tie of the business
they can't get away from. For me, I can always
at the end of my day go home and go
(42:53):
I tried my best today. Did I make a difference?
Yes or no? Because I don't know. There's lots of
them out there. For me, I've got four thousand I
think it's two hundred girls or something. Now you can't
remember the number of the top of my head, but
of them, at least probably three thousand are stuck in
some kind of vortex, often of not being able to
(43:18):
find the way out. I don't carry that monkey, you know,
I don't have that. So yeah, my job is to
try and help them as much as possible. And you know,
some people say to me year, but they've got to
help themselves, and that is true. And I have seen
some people where, you know, I might have said to
(43:38):
them seven or eight years ago, maybe you should think about,
you know, changing your career options or where you're at.
But it's easy for me to say, right, because I
don't carry the burden that they carry. And it's a
big it's a big step. I can't even imagine what
(43:58):
that step would be like for some of those guys
to have to make that decision. And in fact, I
had a meeting with a grower at my conference who
said exactly that to me. He said, I am not
going to burden my children with this. He said, just
because I've been successful in this business does not mean
because their surname is the same as mine, they will
be as successful as me. He is the first and
(44:21):
only grower that I've ever come across who articulated it
like that, and I was stoked. I mean, because he
has a very big, very successful business and he's not
gonna burden his kids with it and he's made that
conscious decision, and shit, I wish others could do that.
(44:41):
But it's not that easy sometimes, right, So that's my
job to try and make that better for them. It's
not easy, and I don't ever expect that they understand it,
because they shouldn't. My job is to try and allow
them to be the best growers in the world and
to get on with doing what they do. But again,
there's been so much change over to the last decade
(45:03):
and a half that now we have to kind of
bring them closer to what happens here in Wellington and
why we can't make those changes or why we can,
and what's driving that so they at least have an understanding.
But it's hard. It's a lot. You know that they're
trying to do more than a full day job growing
(45:24):
and farming, and now we're trying to say, oh, and
by the way, can you also have an awareness of
all of this other stuff? I don't know, maybe getting
back to being a team of five thousand in horticulture
and you know, working together. I don't know. I don't
want to sound like to send to God forbid, but
just saying, you know, conceptually there's a merit in that somehow,
(45:48):
and I don't Maybe that's our next evolution, right, Maybe
that's where the next generation because I am you know
if you think, I think at average age is sixty eight,
you know.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Eight?
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Come on, you know, I love that to be forty something.
And it's not until we get that, when we have
that generational shift, that you'll get that new change of thinking.
But it hasn't been able to change because those guys
are still working in the businesses. Right. My shit, Convan
(46:22):
Will I think is I don't know, he must be
getting close to ninety and he still goes out and
frost frosts and you know, grows fruit and works every day.
I know a number of our growers in their seventies
and eighties, who do how do you change that? How
do you create the environment? And I know it's hard
because they've got kids, you know, my age or slightly younger.
(46:45):
Frustrated because you know, there's that tension. You need to
move on, you know, I can't because I can't, you know.
So yeah, yeah, it's agre New Zealand, right and we
love it, Yeah we do.
Speaker 5 (46:58):
And honestly, I just want to take a bit of
a moment, because we have been through a bit of
a journey in the last hour or so, just to
say thank you so much for being such an incredible
leader in our industry, not only in the role that
you're in at the moment, but this uning that we've
been through, that we've talked through this afternoon has been
(47:21):
pretty incredible and I just want to really honor you
for that work that you've done over the years, and
thank you as well for being part of our podcast
and sharing some of your insights really honestly with us
and with our listeners and for those of us that
were a woman of New Zealand, where we're always looking
for wonderful women to bring into our fold and we're
(47:42):
really grateful to have to have you as part of
one of us.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
Thank you, no, thank you guys as well. And I mean,
if there's anything we can ever do is all endzed,
We're happy to help you know, we do really want
to figure out how to help the next generation and
provide a really safe opportunity for them to come through.
So if you have any great ideas, we'll love to hear.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yes, thank you so much, And just to echo clears points,
just I love your bluntness.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
I know you talked about this at the start.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
You're like, oh, I'm gonna be blunt here, but excellence
is so great, So thank you.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
Right.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
So, if you've enjoyed this chat and the others that
we've held were fantastic real women, then.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
Please support us by joining the fold.
Speaker 5 (48:28):
Just see to our website Rural womaninzied dot in zed
or check out the show notes. Sign up and be
part of shaping future generations for women in rural New Zealand.
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