The Inside Story
Midlands-based consultancy firm M4 Management has recently won a £2.5m consultancy contract to help the Polish Ministry of Justice run more efficiently. Louise Ramsay talks to company director John Hutchby, 65, who volunteered as an Olympic Games Maker, to find out more
In the beginning
I started out at 19 as an apprentice at Rolls Royce on a five year mechanical engineering sandwich-course degree at what is now Trent University. I then worked in productivity services at Boots for five years, the last three as the head of the department.
I moved on to consultancy firm W D Scott in 1976 to work as a management consultant. I took ownership of the company in 1992 and M4 Management developed from there.
Eastern Europe
For the first 15 years or so we concentrated on UK clients. I had a lot of them and wasn’t keen to work outside the UK because I hate flying – it petrifies me.
Then 11 years ago a client in Ireland put me in touch with a bank in Croatia and one in Poland. I realised there was a lot of potential in Eastern Europe. The people there are very bright, but naïve about competitive business and optimising staff utilisation. They want to be productive, but don’t have the experience we’ve got in western Europe to do it.
Over the past three years we’ve racked up 11 projects in Poland, but the Ministry of Justice is the biggest. The project started in the spring and we visited Poland regularly to train the team of 16 local contractors working with our Polish management team to deliver the 18-month project.
Passport to Export
We applied to participate in the UKTI’s Passport to Export scheme and got accepted. The scheme provides many benefits including matched funding. This meant for every £1 we put in, the UKTI would match it – up to the scheme’s funding limit. This meant I could really afford to spend time in Poland drumming up work.
One of the benefits of the Passport scheme was the use of the British Embassy facilities and services in whichever country we were working in. The wide range of services included intelligence gathering, market survey reports and organising meetings with local organisations using the embassy as a meeting place. It was invaluable networking, especially the rapid provision of research and information which would have taken me weeks to find.
The UKTI also has a thorough understanding of all aspects of exporting, which is invaluable to anyone coming into it.
Culture
The language and the culture is a major challenge, in many countries only senior executives are fluent in English. A second factor is the culture. In Poland and Croatia, business is done in a very different way. For example in Croatia deals are made over drinks or dinner and you have to wait for them to make a decision, you can’t push for it, or you’ll lose the business. If they’re interested, they’ll go ahead, but you can’t try to close a deal too soon.
Luckily, I’ve picked these things up over time but had I known about the UKTI’s Passport earlier, everything would have been a lot easier. They are great for pointing out cultural idiosyncrasies.
The benefits of exporting
The people, the language, the culture, I’ve learned so much about the places I visit in a way I just couldn’t if I’d gone as a tourist. It’s all new, it’s all learning, it’s fantastic. Eastern Europe is so cheap to be in too.
There aren’t any bad bits. I don’t even have to fly – I drive it’s only a 15 hour trip to Croatia and even less to Poland. I go by different routes and see different things every time I go.
Even when the children were younger, travel wasn’t a problem in the UK. I’d just get them to come out to stay with me in the holidays if I was away, but then I’d have weeks at home when I didn’t have to work on site, so for me there weren’t any issues but others may find this more of a problem.
Plans for the future
I plan to use the experience gained in Eastern Europe to get more work there, then move into the US, China and maybe India. I will do it bit by bit and I am fortunate to have a colleague who’ll do the flying so I don’t have to.
I’m already semi-retired, but over the next few years, once things are up and running, I’ll back off a bit. But I’ll never stop wanting to learn about people, it’s what keeps me going.
I’ve done degrees in psychology and sports psychology because what motivates people interests me. It’s what this business is about.
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