In this episode you can learn the story behind Howarth Timber & Building Supplies and its 185 year history, straight from our Managing Director, Nick Howarth.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- Nick's gap year travelling the world and his subsequent entry into the family business
- The origins of Howarth Timber
- About Nick's father and the evolution of the business
- How we measure success and our growth philosophy
- And much, much more...
Transcript
[0:05] Paul Bullivant (Host):
Welcome back to the Howarth Timber and Building Supplies 1840 Podcast. I’m your host, Paul Bullivant, and on today’s episode we’re going to be talking about the history of the Howarth Timber Group, going right back to our humble origins in 1840, and then moving right forward to today, where we find ourselves one of the UK’s largest privately owned builders’ merchants.
[0:28] Paul:
And to help me in that conversation, I’ve got somebody with me who’s been pivotal to that growth over the years and really does have the business coursing through his veins, a big warm welcome to Nick Howarth. Hello Nick.
[0:44] Nick Howarth:
You’re welcome, Paul. I’m glad to be here.
[0:47] Paul:
Good, pleased to have you. Shall we just start by letting you introduce yourself? Because there’ll be people, obviously, who don’t know you.
[0:53] Nick:
Well, I’m Nicholas Howarth. I’m joint chair of the Howarth Timber Group with my brother Andrew, but also I’m the CEO of Howarth Timber and Building Supplies.
[1:10] Paul:
Okay. Anything you could add about yourself personally? People within the business know you as the… but I’m sure they’ll be interested in hearing a bit about Nick, the man behind the…
[1:16] Nick:
I grew up in Leeds. I went to Leeds Grammar School, and then I went to Manchester University to do a management degree. And then actually, quite unusually then for the time, I kind of did a gap year. I sort of travelled most of the way around the world.
[1:43] Nick:
And back then it was before the internet, before mobile phones, in fact before most places had dial-up exchanges. So if you wanted to make a call from, say, when I was in Afghanistan or Iraq or Myanmar, Burma as it was then, you had to go to a local telephone exchange and book a call a month ahead.
[2:04] Nick:
And then I joined the business. I became the manager of our Thorne branch, which was one of our smaller branches, and still is. And then after a couple of years there I went and took over the management of our Wakefield branch, which is still one of our bigger, more successful branches.
[2:37] Paul:
Okay, that’s great. Any interesting stories from your travels? You said you went to Afghanistan and places that you think nowadays you wouldn’t want to travel.
[2:44] Nick:
Well, I think people used to laugh at the time because wherever I went, a year afterwards had a revolution or an invasion. And it was like the last time you could travel through the Middle East and Iran and into Afghanistan without… well, because after that it just became what it’s been for the last forty-odd years, which is revolution and wars.
[3:09] Paul:
Looking back, is there anything that you learned about yourself going and doing that?
[3:16] Nick:
Very much so. I started off with three friends in a Land Rover and we travelled through Europe, the Middle East, around Afghanistan and into India together. But then we had different timetables so we split up.
[3:37] Nick:
So the last few months I was travelling by myself through India and Southeast Asia, although there were limits on what you could do in Southeast Asia then, because that’s when Pol Pot was doing his massacres in Cambodia.
[4:00] Nick:
Southeast Asia now is relatively calm, a big tourist destination, but it wasn’t then because it was shortly after the end of the Vietnam War. So there was still a lot of turmoil in Southeast Asia then.
[4:13] Nick:
But actually, I felt I learned more in that one year travelling than I did three years at university, because you have to be very self-reliant. And obviously when you’re travelling you’ve got time to self-reflect and think, so I really felt I kind of grew up and learned more in that one year than I did in three years at university.
[4:39] Paul:
Interesting. My wife, over the years she’s lived in America and Canada, and she says they were really good points in her life to stand on your own two feet away from your culture.
[4:52] Paul:
Okay, so today we’re going to focus on the history of the business. In particular, I want to focus on what I would call the modern era of the business, so kind of from your father onwards. But before we do that, do you want to just give some context about Howarth Timber today, who we are, what we are?
[5:04] Nick:
Well, as you said, Paul, the business started in 1840. It was in fact started by the father-in-law of my great-great-great-grandfather, a guy called William Hudson.
[5:22] Nick:
And in fact it was called Hudson & Co right through until about 50 years ago, where the name changed to Howarth Timber. My father made that change.
[5:32] Nick:
So it started off as a timber merchant in Leeds, single site. And my family’s always been involved in the business right back to my great-great-great-grandfather, great-great-great-great-grandfather even.
[5:59] Nick:
But the family only had a minority share in it. My grandfather, he was the foreman of the sawmill, because back in those days merchants had quite big sawmills because they used to do a lot of homegrown timber. So they’d bring logs in and saw them down to make planks, as well as buying in pre-machined timber, a lot of it from Canada, and then later more from Scandinavia, which is where we source most timber now.
[6:43] Nick:
And a limited range of sheet materials, because back then there was really only chipboard and plywood.
[6:54] Nick:
It had been loss-making for many years. My father went into the business in the late ’50s. My father was a clever guy, he’d gone to Oxford University, worked in industry, then decided to join the family business.
[7:24] Nick:
My grandfather had about 15% of the shares, but it had been loss-making for many years. And he agreed with the shareholders that if he went into the business and turned it around and made it profitable, he would buy them out at a predetermined figure, which he did. And that took probably through till the mid-’60s.
[7:52] Nick:
After that is when the company started expanding. And also then, in the ’60s, it was quite a benign environment, lots of housing being built, still reconstructing after the damage of the Second World War, so demand was quite good.
[8:15] Nick:
And the business became very successful under my father, partly due to market conditions, but also due to his brilliance of managing the business.
[8:32] Paul:
And then bringing forward to where we are today, can you give some context?
[8:38] Nick:
Well, as I said, I worked in the business when I was at school and through university. Like many family firms, my father brought the business home with him, so we talked about it over the dinner table and at home.
[9:03] Nick:
My earliest experiences of the company were on Saturday mornings, my father going to work, I would go in and be there and just kind of hang out. This is when I was quite young, and they did that quite often.
[9:21] Nick:
Then when I was about 14 I started going and working there, either in the shop counter serving, which helped because my mental arithmetic became good, because that was all very manual and you had to do sums quick in your head. And then also I’d work in the yard when I was a bit older.
[9:54] Paul:
How were you treated by the staff in the branch, as the son of the…?
[9:59] Nick:
I mean, obviously they’re always aware of that. But I always worked hard and contributed, and I’ve never been the kind of arrogant person. I never tried to lord it over anybody, because I’ve always respected people’s experience and knowledge.
[10:28] Nick:
So I’d say the vast majority, I was accepted well. And by the time I was probably about 15, because there wasn’t much health and safety in those days, I was driving forklifts and sideloaders and operating machinery.
[10:48] Paul:
I’ve got a story I’d like to ask you about, around forklifts, and I’m pleased you’ve mentioned health and safety because we weren’t sure where to mention it. This comes from an old colleague and friend of Steve Baxter at Wakefield. He seems to have a plethora of stories.
[11:05] Nick:
Well, I employed Steve when I was managing Wakefield and he started as a 16-year-old.
[11:10] Paul:
Okay. So he’s got two stories he was telling me yesterday, he couldn’t stop laughing. The first one is: you were doing a stocktake with him one day, and Steve was going to drive the forklift, but you said, “No, get out the way, I’m going to drive the forklift.” And you drove up a ramp, got to the top, jumped out, forgot to put a handbrake on, and the forklift started rolling back and nearly went into the canal. Is that really what happened?
[11:39] Nick:
Yeah… I don’t remember that exact incident, but I probably had so many incidents like that that I’ve forgotten that particular one.
[11:49] Paul:
Well Steve said we were very lucky, there was a lump of wood at the bottom of the… if it hadn’t been for that, we’d have been having a sideloader…
[12:00] Nick:
I remember back in the 1980s, the canal that runs past the Wakefield branch, you could always tell what the in-fashion colour was for next season in clothes, because the canal would turn into that colour. Because there was a very large textile and clothes manufacturing around Wakefield.
[12:18] Nick:
This is 40-odd years ago. They used to dye the clothes, and environmental things weren’t as strong then either, so all the chemicals from the clothing factory used to end up in the canal, and the canal would change colour.
[12:29] Paul:
I think it’s a regular theme here about health and safety improving over the years.
[12:35] Nick:
Yeah. It has, which is a good thing.
[12:41] Paul:
Good. His other story, which I think is well told within the business, but would be interesting to share, is the one about Steve having to help you with a forklift to lift your Bentley up after getting a puncture in the car park.
[12:54] Nick:
Yeah, yes. That’s correct. I had to change the wheel because I’d lost the jack, or whatever.
[13:05] Paul:
He said the problem was: in the car park the land had subsided, so by the time you’d had a flat it had got that low that you couldn’t actually get the jack underneath the car. So you needed to get on a forklift.
[13:17] Nick:
Yes, that incident happened.
[13:26] Paul:
And you said you were getting a few honks and waves by the cars as they came past, the nice car being lifted on a forklift.
[13:31] Nick:
Yes.
[13:38] Paul:
Good. So you kind of worked through the business, you’ve earned your stripes, and then you became a branch manager.
[13:44] Nick:
Yes. I was manager of the Thorne branch for a couple of years before I then went to manage the Wakefield branch.
[13:49] Paul:
And then after the Wakefield branch, that would be when…?
[13:55] Nick:
Well, sadly, my father got prostate cancer when he was in his late 50s. He passed away when he was 62, 1988.
[14:06] Nick:
But I only really knew he had cancer and that he was terminally ill for about a year or so, because he didn’t really tell anybody for the first two or three years he had cancer. But for the last year or so, yes, he told us.
[14:33] Nick:
And obviously it was a very big shock. He was a very big person in my life. And 62 is a young age today.
[14:47] Paul:
Could you feel, after he made you aware that he was ill, were you consciously aware of him trying to speed up your experience and education?
[15:02] Nick:
Yes. My brother went to Howarth Timber Importers, which is now Arbor Forest Products, to manage that side of the group. And I focused more on the merchanting side and the timber engineering, roof truss manufacturing side.
[15:17] Paul:
Okay, so at the point when your father passed, you and Andrew then took over the leadership of the business.
[15:24] Nick:
Yes. We became joint chair of the Howarth Timber Group. Andrew’s always focused more on the New Holland site, with the dock, and I’ve always…
[15:33] Nick:
But we also had a window factory at the time. I got involved in the window factory and I did in fact run that as CEO for a number of years, along with being CEO of Howarth Timber and Building Supplies. But then I stepped away from that, just to focus more on Howarth Timber and Building Supplies, and also the engineered timber side of Howarth Timber as well.
[16:02] Paul:
How did you go down the path of building supplies and Andrew of timber importers, was it just natural?
[16:10] Nick:
It was natural. In essence, my father asked Andrew to manage that side, and I think that was actually before he told us he was terminally ill. And I gravitated more toward the non–New Holland parts of the group.
[16:27] Nick:
So it’s quite natural because the group’s got five companies in it, and they are all quite siloed, with their own market specialisms, their own management teams, their own strategies, plans and budgets.
[16:54] Nick:
But we do have a number of other group structures. Where it makes sense to do things on a group-wide basis because there’s economies of scale or synergy, then we do, such as treasury and finance. So we have a Group Finance Director that looks after the treasury and oversees the overall accounting functions, and also governance structures.
[17:23] Nick:
And then insurances are done at group level. Health and safety is done at group level. HR is a group-level function. And also IT systems, the network is group-managed, along with cybersecurity.
[17:59] Nick:
But the individual application programs are managed within the individual companies, because they’ve got different ERP systems for their needs.
[18:12] Paul:
Just taking you back a little bit to that point in your life when your father passed away and you took on the business, they’re two big moments in anybody’s life. I’m trying to pick your brains a little bit around resilience, because to handle those two things at the same time would take a huge amount of resilience. How did you cope with the two things?
[18:33] Nick:
Resilience has never been a problem for me. I’ve always just kind of got on with the job. Obviously, bigger and greater responsibilities, which I stepped into, as did Andrew, but it would just keep evolving and growing and managing what was already there, and evolving it over time and growing over time.
[19:11] Paul:
So to a degree you were able to compartmentalise the personal side and the business side, as much as you could?
[19:17] Nick:
Yeah.
[19:17] Paul:
Do you think resilience is a real Howarth family trait? I say that based on looking at the history of the business, there’ve been a lot of ups and downs through the years.
[19:23] Nick:
I believe so, yes. Obviously I can only speak for people I know, my grandfather, my father, Andrew, myself, and our children. I’d say we’re all fairly well grounded and resilient, and have good traditional Yorkshire common sense.
[19:57] Paul:
Can you teach resilience, do you think, or is it just a natural trait?
[20:03] Nick:
I think it’s an attitude of mind. And I suppose it helps to some extent the older you get, because a lot of things you’ve seen before, life tends to go around in cycles.
[20:18] Nick:
For example, our industry is having a challenging time at the moment with market conditions, but that happens every 15 years. When you’ve seen it through the cycles, you learn not to get too morose when things are very difficult. But conversely you don’t get over-excited when things are too high.
[20:51] Nick:
You’ve got to be balanced, because what goes up is going to come down again. That’s the way. And what you’ve got to do is keep moving the business forward and evolving within that environment, a bit like a ship on the sea: it goes up and down with the waves, but it keeps moving forward.
[21:11] Paul:
That’s good, you hear that quite a lot from sports people, not letting the highs be too high and the lows too low.
[21:17] Paul:
When you and Andrew took over the reins, did you ever think the business would be the size it is?
[21:29] Nick:
I think we both had ambitions for the business to be successful and grow. We’ve never had a set plan to be a set size. Lots of businesses do that, but that’s with more of a view of, say, if you want to list on the stock exchange, or if a private equity firm wants to reach a certain size to aggregate up and sell out with a higher multiple.
[22:07] Nick:
But that’s not our game plan. Our game plan is to evolve and grow the business, and evolving and changing the business is important to growing it.
[22:12] Nick:
What we want to be isn’t the biggest business there is, but one of the most, if not the most, successful businesses. And by success, that’s not just financial. It’s respected by customers, respected by suppliers, colleagues within the business, and colleagues respect the business and enjoy working in it. All those things are important.
[22:51] Paul:
So over that 38 years that you’ve been MD, you’re bound to have had lots of highs and lows. Are there any you could give us an example of, a high that’s made you really proud, and a low and what lesson you learned?
[23:17] Nick:
As you say, there’s not one big event that’s positive and not one big event that is really negative. It’s lots of good events of different types and magnitude, and also quite a lot of negative events of different sizes and magnitude.
[23:45] Nick:
But I would say success is when people develop and grow within the business. I get a lot of positives from that. Such as we’ve appointed three regional managers up from who were branch managers earlier this year, that’s always a big positive for me.
[24:16] Nick:
Negative, again, it was this appointment we had a few years ago. Somebody who’d previously been a branch manager, he didn’t get a promotion, and he became quite negative. In fact we had a couple of people that fell within that remit, and stayed within the business, and they were undermining the business and upsetting colleagues.
[24:50] Nick:
It was dealt with, but it was difficult for me, because I felt that was not really fair, what they were doing to both the business and the colleagues they were upsetting.
[25:03] Paul:
Did that make you lose faith in people?
[25:09] Nick:
No. It didn’t make me lose faith in people, because there are all different types of people. I know there’s axe murderers and rapists out there, but that doesn’t put me off people as a whole.
[25:31] Paul:
Very good. The business has been in the family for a very long time. What are the pluses and negatives of running a family business?
[25:37] Nick:
I think the positives are that you take a long-term view of things.
[25:50] Nick:
Unlike a PLC, which has to report every six months, and if things aren’t going to plan, you need to take drastic action to turn around. Often that action is excessive or not properly thought through.
[26:11] Nick:
Or if you’re private equity, it’s all about doing what you need to do to sell the business out in five or so years’ time, rather than what’s good for the business longer term.
[26:32] Nick:
And I always believe having a business that is stable, and having a longer-term growth plan, is better. That creates stability. It creates an environment where you can allow people to be experimental and entrepreneurial, because if it goes wrong and it costs you a bit, that’s not the end of the world.
[27:07] Nick:
Merchanting is one of the few industries where being entrepreneurial is important to be successful. It’s almost a perfect market, if you’re an economist, because there’s lots of suppliers and lots of customers. Human relationships are very important, it’s business-to-business, it’s people buying and selling from people still.
[27:36] Nick:
Those human relationships, and trusting people within the branches to make the right decisions, within an overall environment of monitoring and control so things don’t spiral badly off on a tangent, is good.
[27:58] Nick:
I was surprised: we carried out some market research over summer at what younger tradespeople wanted, because we’ve been investing very heavily in our website and app, because the world is moving towards e-commerce.
[28:19] Nick:
But actually, merchanting is a lot more traditional still in the way people buy than most retail now. And we found that the most important thing for younger tradespeople is the relationships they have with people in the branch, the way it always has been whilst I’ve worked in it, and I suppose going back through time before then.
[28:49] Nick:
Obviously e-commerce is important to them, and they use it more for business services than transacting and buying.
[29:02] Nick:
So the fact that we’ve got an award-winning, one of the best, e-commerce and app platforms within the industry is good, because the industry is moving that way. And e-commerce makes money now, but for a number of years at the start it was just putting money and putting money in, not the return. But we did that because being a private company we can take that longer-term view.
[29:42] Nick:
I think culture-wise as well: family businesses tend to have a more open, friendly culture than a lot of PLCs and private equity firms.
[30:01] Nick:
And what’s heartening for me is: yes, we get labour turnover, but actually we’ve got an awful lot of people wh stay with us many, many years.
[30:14] Paul:
And then on the negative side, are there any negatives? For example an obvious one must be you can’t turn off from it, because it’s not a job, it’s a…
[30:19] Nick:
It is. That’s more so for me. But there again, I enjoy what I do. I don’t dread coming to work, even coming to a podcast like this, which I’ve never done before. It’s another challenge.
[30:48] Nick:
But organisationally, the main limitation of a private firm business is you can’t go out and get external finance to grow rapidly.
[31:02] Nick:
A PLC can do a rights issue, issue more shares, get money in to expand quickly. A private equity-backed business gets lots of borrowed money in, which was a better model when interest rates were half a percent rather than where they are now. And that business model, in a cyclical industry, is now showing the strains.
[31:36] Nick:
But it does let you go out and double the size of the company in two or three years, which you can’t do, because all our growth is based on retained profits and internal finance. We’ve always kept 85% of our profits within the business to reinvest back.
[32:01] Paul:
So allowing for the fact that work and your private life are intrinsically linked, you never shut off from it, how do you get away from work when you want to? What are the things you do?
[32:13] Nick:
I’ve never found it difficult to relax. I’ve always found it very easy, head hits the pillow to sleep. There’ve been occasions when there’s a particularly significant problem that you spend more time thinking about, but…
[32:39] Nick:
Hobbies, I’ve had a number, and a lot I’ve carried forward.
[32:48] Nick:
I’ve always been good at swimming. I’ve had my eyes done now, but when I was young at school there weren’t contact lenses, and glasses were glass, not plastic. So you couldn’t really play contact sports, cricket or rugby or football, with glasses on, in case you got hit and got a big piece of glass stuck in your eye.
[33:20] Nick:
So I didn’t really play the main sports at school, but I was quite good at swimming and that’s something I’ve always kept up with. I was never a really good runner because my legs are too big, fat like drag in the water, but I was a good swimmer. One of the best in the school.
[33:53] Nick:
I got into scuba diving when I was 15. I joined the Leeds branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club. I did a lot of that. I still dive, but only where the water’s warm and clear.
[34:24] Paul:
So how deep have you dived?
[34:24] Nick:
About 40 metres. Some people go deeper with mixed gases now, but they weren’t really around when I was doing the bulk of my diving. I did most of my diving when I was in my 20s.
[34:49] Nick:
And when I was young I was an RAF cadet, and I went off and got my gliding wings when I was 17. I don’t think they allow cadets to do that now, I think there were too many deaths, because literally you had a lot of brushes with health and safety.
[35:13] Nick:
You’d go to an RAF base, turn up Saturday morning, do about half a dozen joint launches with you, and then they’d catapult you up to 1,000 feet when you’d probably had about 20 minutes flying experience, and you’d try to fly a circuit and land back.
[35:35] Nick:
If you do it now with an amateur gliding club, you’ve got weeks and weeks and hours and hours before they let you loose. But they’d put these 17-year-olds up on these fruit packing cases with wings and try and fly a circuit and land back.
[35:55] Paul:
This is where all your resilience skills are built, it’s either die or…
[36:00] Nick:
So I then got into flying and got my pilot’s licence, and I flew for probably 25 years.
[36:06] Paul:
Amazing. Did we have, I heard a story that we used to have a company plane?
[36:12] Nick:
Yeah. We used to have a company plane because my brother, also a pilot, used to use it at Arbor Forest Products to fly out to Scandinavia and Russia. And I used to use it for internal flights as well. They wanted to do Scandinavian trips as well.
[36:33] Paul:
Any near-death experiences when flying?
[36:38] Nick:
No, not really, fortunately.
[36:38] Nick:
And through my scuba diving, when I was in my 20s, I got into a game called underwater hockey. It’s like most sports: the Brits invented it, but the rest of the world kicks our arse at it now.
[36:57] Nick:
I’ve played that for about 40 years, in fact I played last night at John Charles [Centre] in Leeds. I still play that.
[37:05] Paul:
So you still… And you horse ride as well, don’t you?
[37:10] Nick:
Yeah. I’m a happy hack rider. I go out, rent a horse on a Sunday morning for an hour, sometimes do longer rides.
[37:23] Paul:
You live a really full life between work and all of that.
[37:30] Nick:
Yeah, I like to go cycling too. So I keep myself busy. I’ve always kept myself active and fit.
[37:35] Paul:
That’s good.
[37:35] Paul:
When I was researching for this, I was using our Howarth Timber book to do some background reading. I remember when I joined the business and I was given a book, I thought it was really impressive that the business had a book itself.
[37:54] Paul:
I’ve got a couple of things I want to ask you out of it, but what was the background to having a book written?
[38:01] Nick:
Well, we did the first one in 1990 when the company celebrated its 150 years. We did [another] in 2015 when the company was celebrating its 175 years, and no doubt in 15 years’ time we’ll do a 200 anniversary book in 2040.
[38:22] Paul:
You must be really proud of having that.
[38:30] Nick:
It is, particularly the first one, because my granddad was still alive. And also other people who had longer memories of the business.
[38:44] Nick:
So there was a lot of background information put in there from people that were interviewed by the author, and that’s been captured.
[39:01] Nick:
And the same author was still around in 2015, so he actually continued the story. Not quite sure whether he’ll be there in 2040 though.
[39:11] Paul:
I guess like anything, when I joined the business and I read it, you skim read it and focus on the more recent parts. But in researching for this, there are some real stories in amongst it, probably enough stories to do another podcast episode.
[39:24] Paul:
But two things out of it I’d like to ask you. The book says Andrew confesses that he can never remember having a cross word in business with his brother.
[39:39] Paul:
On your brothers, there must be a cross word…?
[39:44] Nick:
No, no, no. I’d say within business maybe it helps because the business is quite siloed. He runs more the Arbor Forest Products side and the New Holland Dock side. I run more the merchants and get involved more in the engineered solutions side, although that has its own COO, so it’s very much like an arm’s-length role I have within that.
[40:12] Nick:
We’ve also now got the company acquired recently, Verdon Timber. That my nephew manages, he’s CEO of that.
[40:26] Nick:
But we respect each other. Our businesses have been successful, and we get on well.
[40:39] Paul:
That’s excellent. That’s good to see, because it must be challenging at times working with a brother or a father…
[40:47] Nick:
It is. If something’s important to us, then we generally say, “Okay, if you want to do that, do it.”
[40:53] Paul:
Okay, that’s great.
[40:53] Paul:
The book talks about your father’s only concession to wealth was a Rolls-Royce, with a distinctive number plate H4, that rarely came out of the garage. What’s your memories of that, and where’s the H4 number plate gone?
[41:07] Nick:
Well, my brother’s, it’s still owned by the car company, but I think it’s on one of my brother’s cars.
[41:14] Nick:
I’ve never really been much into personalised number plates. I’ve never really had one, same way I’m wearing an [unclear] watch, I’m not into Rolexes or anything like that.
[41:33] Nick:
The memories of the car, actually my father didn’t use it that much. I think he just decided to
have one.
[41:54] Nick:
Although the business wasn’t successful until my father went into it in the 1960s, my grandfather was the mill foreman of that one site and stayed doing that until he retired.
[42:11] Nick:
My father bought him a Rolls-Royce, really, and that was actually a better one, because he bought that before he got his own.
[42:29] Paul:
I think we’re going to need another episode, because there are a number of other stories from the book that I think are worthy of talking about. I better read the book, I’ve had 40 years…
[42:42] Paul:
And obviously there are builders’ merchants issues that I think would be good to get your views on from today, rather than just looking at the past and the history of the business. So we’ll come back to those.
[42:48] Paul:
But I’m trying to finish these podcast episodes off with a set of quickfire questions that we ask to everybody, just to get some general views and opinions on how people work. So here we go.
[43:00] Paul:
What makes a great leader, and what makes a high-performing team?
[43:05] Nick:
I’d say the two go together, because you’ve got to have a good leader for a high-performing team.
[43:12] Nick:
A good leader builds and supports a high-performing team, and gets everybody working cohesively, but not rigidly.
[43:33] Nick:
And I believe a great leader lets people who are good, and he’s got confidence in, experiment and do their own things. And then the team as a whole learns from that and evolves and moves forward together.
[43:58] Nick:
I’m a great believer in what people are talking about more, “try quick and fail quick”, and I think that is part of the culture of a good team.
[44:20] Nick:
Yes, you’ve got to have a good team building a good culture within the organisation, and also having a direction of travel and plan.
[44:27] Paul:
Favourite part of your job?
[44:36] Nick:
Seeing people succeed and do well. I referred to the promotions, we promote a lot internally. Paul Fearns, our Oldham branch manager, mentioned that in one of our previous podcasts.
[45:04] Nick:
What I don’t like, not so much for myself but for other people, given we are in a cyclical industry: in spite of people doing their best, the market turns against you, and financially business units don’t perform.
[45:18] Nick:
I know that is difficult for me, but it’s also difficult for other people, particularly people who probably haven’t seen the cyclical nature of the industry as much as me.
[45:31] Paul:
Most difficult part of your job?
[45:39] Nick:
The most difficult part is… I mentioned the couple of people who turned negative because they didn’t get the promotion.
[45:53] Nick:
But also conversely: when you appoint somebody to a position and, in spite of their best efforts, they’re just not the right person for that role. Their performance is undermining their team because they’re not leading it properly, and probably actually hurting and damaging them as well, and then having to remove them out of that position.
[46:29] Paul:
The best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
[46:35] Nick:
I’ve shared it before at company conferences: “Every day is a school day.” Because the world is changing, in fact, changing faster than it ever has done.
[46:47] Nick:
The only constant is change. And I think a big part of that is driven by technology. You’ve got to keep evolving and learning and adapting.
[47:08] Nick:
I’ve enjoyed that, the challenge of adapting to change. For example, what we’re doing with artificial intelligence within the building supplies business to evolve the business and improve it using that.
[47:28] Nick:
Because if you don’t, an organisation that doesn’t evolve becomes obsolete.
[47:39] Paul:
That’s good advice.
[47:39] Paul:
And I’ve got a final question that’s just sprung to mind while we’re talking about this: how do you feel after your first go at podcasting?
[47:45] Nick:
Actually fine. I’m quite relaxed about it.
[47:51] Paul:
Have you enjoyed it?
[47:58] Nick:
I’ve enjoyed it. I think the town hall address will be more challenging because it’ll be live, and there’ll be more opportunity for curve questions, etc. So it might have all been quite straight [today].
[48:11] Nick:
But I’m quite knowledgeable about the company, and I’m happy to talk about it.
[48:19] Paul:
Well, listen, I thank you for your time. Thank you, Paul. I thank you for believing in us and having a go at something like this, because this is not normal builders’ merchant behaviour, but it is really insightful listening to you talking about the history and what have you. So thank you for coming on.
[48:38] Paul:
I think we will be having you back, because as I say I’ve got loads more stuff out of the book that we could talk about, plus getting your thoughts on the builders’ merchant industry as a whole.
[48:50] Paul:
To our viewers and listeners, thank you for joining us, and we’ll be back again soon. Thank you.
[48:58 | Music]