Orane
Douglas Orane, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) from 1992 to 1994, will be inducted into the organisation's Hall of Fame on September 30.
According to the PSOJ's criteria for selection, the awardee must, among other things, have been innovative and should have made sustained contributions to the development of the private sector. Inductees into the Hall of Fame must also have sound character, unquestioned integrity, and high ethical standards, and his company must have shown "above average growth in assets, profits and/or foreign earnings".
Mr. Orane, chairman and chief executive officer of the Grace, Kennedy Group, is a highly respected business leader, who also served one term as an Independent Senator.
In this interview with Earl Moxam, he answered questions about various aspects of his business career and his service to society.
EM: Mr. Orane, on a quick assessment of Grace, Kennedy's current position, how would you assess the state of the company?
DO: Grace, Kennedy is doing well. One can see the increase in our revenue, in our profits, in the market value of our company. These are facts and they, in my mind, reflect what we have chosen to be the mission of Grace, Kennedy. There's a resonance with the people we serve our consumers, customers, business associates, the wider society, which cause people to keep coming back to do business with us. That is why our sales are going up, and in many ways is encapsulated in our mission statement: "To satisfy the unmet needs of our Jamaican and other Caribbean people wherever we live in the world".
EM: How do you determine these unmet needs?
DO: The first way is to listen very carefully. By listening carefully I've found that one picks up what is bothering other people and, ironically, when people complain it is one of the most important times to listen because it means they are being hassled by something that's upsetting them. And so if one can determine what that is, that very often can give us a guideline as to what we can do as a specific response; but also, wrapped up in that complaint is possibly the seed of a new product idea. We value complaints inside Grace, Kennedy, a complaint is actually a gift from our customers. And the reason it's a gift is that it gives us something that we can use to better ourselves.
EM: How long have you been head of Grace, Kennedy?
DO: I joined the company in 1980; I became the Group CEO in 1995, and chairman in 1998. So today I hold two positions, chairman and CEO.
EM: What were some of the main challenges faced by the company in 1995 when you became CEO?
DO: We were in the midst of a huge financial crisis; we had a rapidly devaluing dollar; we had great instability in the financial sector, with institutions collapsing around us. We also saw a contraction in the economy, because the economy had been opened up to outside competition. For example, manufacturing and other sectors that handle goods were finding that, in many ways, we were not prepared for regional and global competition. More important than that, there was almost a crisis in our self-confidence as a people; we felt, maybe we couldn't do this in this world.
And so I thought carefully about what faced me as the new CEO. And it is out of discussions with the people in Grace, Kennedy that we developed what is now the 'Grace 20/20 Vision', which is a vision of what we would like the company to be in the year 2020. It is a very simple vision, and it is based on the fact that our staff at that time felt like we were running up a down escalator; we were taking one step up and two steps down. We were getting increases of 20 per cent a year in salary and inflation was 40 per cent. So it seemed as though our hoped-for improved quality of life was receding away from us rather than getting closer. We therefore came up with a series of things to do differently.
"We decided that if we wanted a better quality of life we needed to improve our productivity; we set a goal to double the productivity of every person in the company by the year 2000 in five years. And in fact, I developed a slogan "to double the productivity from Raf to Rupert". Raf (Rafael Diaz) was then the chairman and Rupert, the messenger.
FROM CHAIRMAN TO THE MESSENGER
So, from the chairman to the messenger we resolved to double our productivity in five years. Some people thought we were crazy saying this was Jamaica and it couldn't be done here. But we set our minds to it and we did it. In fact, we actually exceeded the target that we had set. And one of the things that it has done is to actually transform, not only the company, but the way we think about ourselves, that it is possible for us as a people to be world class!
EM: You obviously were able to overcome the early scepticism. How easy was that?
DO: One of the skills that one has to have as a transformational leader is actually the personal courage to follow through on one's convictions because you will have resistance and it can get very emotional at times, in fact traumatic. We started first in manufacturing because we had no choice. We found our products were not competitive at the time with the rest of CARICOM and the wider Caribbean Basin. So if we did not transform ourselves we would have disappeared.
And we managed to make those changes. In some cases we tried incremental change in a business unit, step-by-step. Sometimes it worked at other times we found that it was not possible to do it incrementally, that the only way was literally to start a new organisation. So what we innovated was to start a completely new business unit same physical location, but we would modernise it with new technology and new approaches to processes.
We retrained many of the people who were there before but sometimes we found that we needed people at a different educational level in order to make it work. This inevitably resulted in displacement of people. There were many people who couldn't cope with that level of change Some people who were near retirement asked to be retired and make way for younger people who could more easily implement the changes contemplated.
One important factor in such situations is engendering trust in how you communicate. I found that there was apprehension about sharing the plans for change with individuals whose workplace was going to be changed. And there was a feeling among some (managers) that we could not tell the workers because if we did they would sabotage the operation or drop their hands and not work at a sub-optimal pace.
So, in the first transformations that we did people didn't know about it until very late in the day. Many of them came to me afterwards and said "I wished you had told me earlier on because we understand these changes that are going on". In fact a lot of them asked why it took so long for us to come to the conclusion that the business needed to change, when they had arrived at that conclusion a long time ago! So one of the things that we now do is share with people where these changes are needed.
We also now provide a panel of counsellors with whom they can meet to seek assistance from.
EM: How did the unions receive the changes?
DO : Generally we have found that the trade unions have co-operated very well and have been supportive of the transformations, recognising that the interests of the workers and those of the company are the same. I have found it to be a very collaborative process and in fact I've developed a great respect for the people in the workers movement in Jamaica. They taught me something, which I didn't know before the skill of listening.
FAIRLY PROGRESSIVE
I remember making a comment some years ago that we were fairly progressive because we communicate with our people by calling a staff meeting and telling them what we're going to do. And a trade unionist said to me, "But Douglas, that's not communication!" So I asked what he meant, we had communicated. He said "No. All you have done is to inform! You haven't listened to what their responses are."
And I accepted that he had a point and concluded that I needed to take the time and create the ambience for people to hear what I have to say, absorb it and respond to me. If people are critical and don't get an opportunity to express it, not only will their views go underground but their emotions as well, and this could lead to other problems like adverse reactions at the workplace and elsewhere.
EM: Take me back to 1980 when you joined the organisation, the early influences and the role of Carlton Alexander.
DO: It was a turbulent period. The person who was actually instrumental in bringing me into the company was Mable Tenn and I owe her a lifetime debt of gratitude for introducing me to Grace, Kennedy. When I joined it was a turbulent period we were making the transition from a socialist economy to one of free enterprise. The company was tremendously short of skills, so I found myself literally thrown in from the first day. I remember Raf (Rafael) Diaz saying "Douglas, here's a file. Run with it!" Those were my instructions on a particular business opportunity, which turned out to be Versair Inflight services, which we formed a joint venture on and ultimately acquired a few months later.
EM: Where were you before coming to Grace?
DO : I was in a family business. I'm originally an engineer by profession. I worked in the sugar industry with the Sugar Manufacturers Association. Then my father became very ill, so I left the sugar industry in my early twenties and joined a small family business, which became colloquially known as Orane Doors.
In the 1970s we actually built a new factory and that's where I learnt the fundamentals of the business skills that I have. As a small family business, I had to go out and collect money on a Friday morning to make payroll on a Friday afternoon. I still recall the goose pimples rising on the back of my neck wondering if I'm going to raise enough.
Then I went to Harvard Business School and joined Grace, Kennedy after that. What I think was really important is that I got a decade in which I worked with Carlton Alexander. When I joined the company I worked with him as what was called corporate planner; but it really meant everything that he thought of and said "this is a good idea, why didn't you think of it?" So it gave me the opportunity to work with a man who had tremendous business skills and at the same time in an environment that was tremendously entrepreneurial because there were so many things changing at the same time. So that really helped to hone many of the values and philosophies I have.
