Liam Dann talks with CEO of the Year Lewis Gradon
Incisive Covid initiatives
“It’s not a ‘ command and control’ kind of organisation,” says Fisher & Paykel Healthcare chief executive Lewis Gradon. “It’s not about an individual, it’s about being part of a group.”
It’s something of an understatement to say that Gradon, the winner of the 2020 Deloitte Top 200 Chief Executive of the Year, is not one to seek the spotlight.
In fact, he’s at pains to point out that he sees himself as just another member of the team at F&P.
But the company certainly has been in the spotlight this year.
It has seen a big rise in its share price — up more than 60 per cent in the past year — as demand for its respiratory equipment surged.
That has come off the back of a long track record of growth, international expansion of both its markets and supply chains.
New Zealand represents less than one per cent of F&P Healthcare sales now and the company has seen its market capitalisation grow exponentially in the past decade.
That has been achieved with a rare degree of stability at the management level.
Since the healthcare division split from the appliances division in 2001 it has had just two chief executives — Gradon and his predecessor Mike Daniell.
And in contrast to modern corporate trends for turning management teams upside down every five years or so, Gradon was very much an internal appointment.
Like Daniell before him, he has spent his whole career with the company. After completing a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Auckland, Gradon joined the company as a product engineer in 1983.
Since then he has held various engineering roles and oversaw development of the company’s healthcare range.
Prior to taking over as chief executive, he was senior vice-president of products and technology.
Gradon has been on the executive management team for more than 20 years.
People have a miscomprehension about the chief executive role, he says. “I think the CEO role at Fisher & Paykel is like all the other roles in that we think about what is our job, how do we add value and we constantly try and improve that . . . in that regard the CEO role is the same as every other role.”
It’s not that F&P Healthcare runs a flat management structure, says Gradon, just that it’s very open to input from all levels of the organisation. “I think if you were sitting in a room observing, you’d struggle to pick a reporting hierarchy.”
In that regard it is an agile operation, he says.
“If we’re working on a particular topic or making a particular decision we assemble the people who can best deal with that particular challenge or opportunity. And that might be from anywhere in the organisation.
“My role is to make sure people are free to be creative and innovative.”
Talking about his team Gradon couldn’t be more enthusiastic.
In fact, when he’s asked about what he’s been most proud of this year, he goes beyond the employees themselves to recognise the effort and sacrifices their families have had to make.
“This year has been all about Covid. There’s been two sides of the Covid coin for us. One is about meeting the demand for those relevant products.”
Gradon says even if that had been positive in terms of revenue, it had presented its own challenges and managing a complex supply chain through lockdowns hasn’t been easy.
But other parts of the business have had the opposite experience, taking a hit to demand.
“So we are having both experiences within our business. New Zealand is less than one per cent of revenue so it’s multi-national in terms of sales and it’s multi-national in terms of supply chains.
“Parts come from all over the world so when countries locked down that would temporarily affect our raw materials.” he explains. “The amazing thing about the last six months for this company has been the contribution of absolutely everybody . . . every individual and every country . . . the second part that’s different is the contribution of our families through all of this.
“We’ve had people coming to work through lockdowns and that means their family are supporting everything at home. We’ve had people working from home, working all different hours. Really all these scenarios involve some support, some contribution from their families, so no matter how you look at it, it’s their family recognising the importance of what FPH is doing.”
But when it comes to personal plaudits, he really is a reluctant recipient. “We recognise the efforts of our teams so we struggle a little bit with the individual recognition,” he says.
The Deloitte Top 200 judges were in no doubt, however. “Lewis knows Fisher & Paykel Healthcare inside out,” says judge and CEO of Direct Capital Ross George.
“He has potentially been in almost every role in his 37-year tenure there.”
Under Gradon’s guidance Fisher & Paykel Healthcare became the first New Zealand company to have a market cap of $20 billion, the judges noted. His leadership “provided a real endorsement for promotion of New Zealand educated internal candidates in Aotearoa.”
“In January of this year, Gradon created incisive Covid initiatives which turned out to be core treatments for the virus.
“In the medical world that put Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and New
Zealand on the map,” says George.
Finalist: Greg Lowe, Beca
For Beca chief executive Greg Lowe the key to strong leadership of an organisation is having a strong sense of purpose and direction.
“Then you need to be able to regularly communicate that to people in a way that they can understand and that inspires them to commit to it.”
Beca was such a diverse business — in terms of its geographical spread and range of sectors it operated in — that the aim was to set the strategic direction.
“Then it’s our people that take us in that direction, in the detailed way that’s relevant to their sector,” he says. “You’ve got to be able to understand people and get people to buy into the direction you want to go.”
The judges certainly felt that Lowe had that skill.
“He is a true people person with an ability to create consensus,” judge Ross George said. “This has been recently recognised with Greg chairing a number of business organisations in their relationships with the Government.”
Lowe has been with Beca for 16 years.
The company is one of the largest privately owned professional services consultancies in the AsiaPacific region, operating in 45 countries each year.
He was previously the Managing Director Australia for Beca, leading
and building services for the region which included overseeing the delivery of the $4 billion Victorian Desalination project, Beca’s largest design commission.
In Australia, he oversaw the delivery of a $4b water project in Melbourne and in NZ, multiple major infrastructure projects in water, electricity, defence, roading and infrastructure and urban planning.”
While Covid had presented a big challenge for the company, Lowe says some of the things he’s been most proud of this year have been dealing with quite high-profile issues.
These include the damage to the Auckland Harbour Bridge and the work they are doing on the Waikato River project to help with Auckland’s water shortage. They were the kind of things where the work really had a big impact on people’s lives, he said.
Finalist: Daniel Mathieson, Zespri
Zespri chief executive Daniel Mathieson played a pivotal role in establishing the demand-led strategy that has helped Zespri continue to grow its key markets, attract new consumers, and deliver strong returns to growers and regional economies.
“Our biggest priority within that has been to look after the health and wellbeing of our people around the
world,” Mathieson says.
The industry has been focused on safely delivering one of its largest crops ever to customers, he says. “We’ve been fortunate to see very strong demand.”
Zespri currently sells into 54 countries with offices in 21 and about 300 international staff.
“It’s been fantastic to see our teams support one and other and to be so motivated in spite of the challenges.”
Mathieson says Zespri is very appreciative that it was able to operate through lockdowns and is grateful to the communities it operates in.
He is proud of the safety measures that have been put in place and the fact there has not yet been any Covid cases within the industry in New Zealand.
“When it comes to leadership the first thing is to build a great team of people and then to have those people really well aligned on the company’s purpose,” he says. “I think if you can do those two things, build a great team and have them all aligned on what the organisation is all about and how we can deliver value over the long term, you’ve got the best chance of succeeding.”
Zespri is results-driven, Mathieson says. “So challenging ourselves that no matter how good the results are today, to be better tomorrow.”
Judge Ross George says Mathieson has been the key executive in Zespri’s rise from the ashes of Psa 10 years ago — “first as global head of sales, and subsequently as chief executive officer since 2017.
“As an Asia expert, with 20 years of experience living in Japan, Korea, and Singapore and a fluent Japanese speaker, Dan has led Zespri’s solid growth in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other Asia economies.
“This in turn has resulted in Zespri increasing its sales by over 40 per cent in his three-year tenure as CEO and posting record profits and payouts to Zespri growers and shareholders in each of the last two years.”