Mining People International - Part 1 - a lesson in integrity and being uncompromising

An Interview with Sue and Steve Heather - founders of MPi.

Sue: Steve and I met through Money & You® and we'd both come to the conclusion independently that the next person we met that we had a relationship with would be a person we could work together with. From there we built People Edge (Sue's original Personnel Consultancy) up and Mining People came from Steve's background in the mining industry. We really wanted to take every lesson that we'd learned and put it into business. That was really our passion at that stage to develop people within the business using the M&Y Principles. And we really believed didn't we Steve that the M&Y principles were what was really needed in business and we wanted to create a business with those values and ethics and grounding.

Steve: Originally we were promoting M&Y in WA and saying we thought we could work with M&Y and at the same time take a range of associated self development programs and promote them into the corporate world. That was going to be our way forward and we'd often said that if M&Y had continued on (back in 1994) we would have developed aligned businesses and really just continued on (with promoting M&Y)

But we'd only just started on that path when M&Y's U.S. owners at the time withdrew from Australia so we decided to put our attention back on Sue's business and then it started to include my background in the resources industry.

Sue: As time went on and we started building the businesses and getting married, it really felt like it was meant to be. It was just right and the right time and we really did have common business ideas and a common belief in what we wanted business to look like and be, and what we wanted to create in it.

JJ: From what I gathered from meeting Brad and Shane who did the last M&Y you've definitely created that. They were both amazed at how much they recognised through the course of the program and what you've implemented into your business. I thought that was fantastic!

Sue: It really has been a process of seeing how far we can go with the principles and it's been a bit like 2 steps forward one step back. You get to a point when you ask people what they thought was different about the business and they tell you that it's the willingness of people around you to challenge you and help you grow - which was exactly what we wanted to do - you sort of sigh and say "We've got it -we've done it" We just need to keep doing what we're doing. And it becomes easier then. And we've got a lot of people who have embraced what we do - but since doing M&Y Brad & Shane definitely have a much deeper understanding.

Steve: There's a lot of little things we've been doing that I've forgotten because it was 15 years ago - and I was really only reminded of many of them in talking with Brad and Shane when they came back. Which was amazing because it just all came back up... there's probably 30 or 40 things and just one example - I've got at the bottom of my tray a piece of paper with a big 'J' drawn on it. We used to have meetings and about 12 years ago I wrote this big 'J' on a piece of paper and I would carry it around with me to every meeting. Someone would start giving me this great big explanation or a reason and it would end up being a justification - and I'd pull this piece of paper out and it became quite a funny thing and it's still in my tray and Brad said "and now I know what that means"

JJ - and isn't it interesting that you can talk about it and they can say - oh yes that's part of our culture, and yet when they do Money & You® they say " Oh I had no idea it meant that..."

Steve: I've been thinking about those questions you asked in your email about what we took away from M&Y but probably the major major major lesson - you know - and Leverage is important - it's only really about the people - you don't really have much else - to keep the space clean you've got to have this constant culture of openness and sharing and not allowing a culture of gossip and innuendo - and that's been the hardest decision - and particularly as we've grown - you know we've hit almost 50 full time staff prior to the GFC and close to 200 contract staff - it's not a small business anymore - and you've got to find other people who want to play by the same rules. You've got to teach them, you've got to give them the experiences - and without that it's just too damn hard. And until they did M&Y we didn't have a common language...

We resolved this by restricting the growth of the business unless we felt that we could adequately replicate what was important to us... If we ever felt it was getting beyond our ability to keep spreading that same message we would hold it back. We felt it just wasn't going to be right for us.

JJ: That takes a lot of integrity to do it like that. That's why some of most successful grads have refused to take their companies public because you start to get told that it's all about the bottom line, it's no longer about the people - and it's all short term thinking.

Steve: Funny you should say this because one of the lessons we got was after we sold 51% of MPi to a public company 2½ years ago - and to cut a long story short we ended up - as a result of the GFC and a number of other issues buying the business back a year and a half ago. Our public company partners were terrific people but we could see we were going to be spending so much more of our time on the compliance side of things and eventually we would have much less time left to spend on the business and the things we loved.

Sue: We both hate doing things where we can see no end result for it and no-one really looks at it - it's just one of those things you have to do. But it doesn't do anything - for anyone.

Steve: We want to make money and we want to do it consistently with great systems, but if it becomes only about the money and process, if that was our only motivation, I'd go back into the mining industry and get a high paying job - or we'd open as many branches as we could as fast as we could. But for us that's not what it's about. We could do it - but we don't want to do it.

Sue: Well we've been able to build this to where we are today and still have a good relationship with family, friends, our own home time, having heaps and heaps of fun at work and at home, travelling a bit having, weekend time and holidays etc etc etc... So we've been able to do all that and still get the business to this size without really having to sell our souls - without giving up our life for a chunk of time to get to this. And that was something that was very important to us. We worked really hard but we played hard... We've had fun at every level - our business, our team, our friends, our family. We were able to get to this level without selling your soul.

JJ: Well done you. I think that's what people want to hear that you can create exactly what you want to create, how you want to create it.

Steve: It's interesting about the size too Jane, that when a company gets to this scale you want to grow further to give more people more opportunities, because if you don't it is difficult... The conclusion we came to was that we would only grow to the extent that we could grow the Shane's and Brad's of this world (and we know we've found some others) - because then we'll give them equity. The biggest shift for us is that they are out there, people with great hearts and if you give them the education they'll take on whole chunks and run whole chunks of the thing. And then you can keep going...

Part 2...

...Next Month Sue and Steve talk about where there business is now, their business model and why their business is different... and how they weathered the GFC...