There has been a changing of the guard at High Growth Business Group in Shepparton and Wangaratta.
The group, which helps business owners and their management teams learn, lead and grow, was started in 2010 by Melbourne’s Andrew Dalziel, who chaired the group since its inception before handing the baton to Steve Ness earlier this year.
For 14 years, Mr Dalziel has been travelling to the area for a week at a time, 10 times a year, to host monthly meetings for two groups in Shepparton and one in Wangaratta.
The idea for the confidential knowledge-sharing and problem-solving group came about when Mr Dalziel worked for a small human resources company through the “recession we had to have” during Paul Keating’s reign as treasurer of Australia.
Mr Dalziel had heard the same story over the phone from several business owners.
“Everyone was talking about it. I thought maybe they might benefit from sitting around a table and talking to each other,” he said.
“So I chaired a meeting with eight people in it.”
That meeting confirmed the demand for such a group, which grew to several sub-groups with hundreds of members across Australia that would meet regularly in capital cities throughout the country.
Eventually, Mr Dalziel started an independent group in Shepparton that was funded by Regional Development Victoria to run for two years.
One year later he set up a second Shepparton group, then in 2015, he started one in Wangaratta.
He had been only going to run the group for the two-year government-funded period, but the group was well established and in demand, so he propositioned members to continue on by paying membership fees to keep the group going.
“When I first came up here, I didn’t know how long I’d be coming up here,” Mr Dalziel said.
“It was one of a few things I was doing and the others were city-based, but I was enjoying it so much I started to drop other things off.”
As chairman, his role included managing the program to optimise benefits for members, introducing the program at each member’s business to clarify its purpose, structure and mutual expectations, developing a flexible curriculum to meet members’ needs and facilitating meetings that engage participants and provide practical information to assist them to succeed.
He also had to book specialist speakers to address topical issues and seek regular feedback to ensure individual and group expectations were being met.
Now, all those responsibilities will fall on Mr Ness, who says he’s adopted the same philosophy as Mr Dalziel.
The group has members from many industries and businesses of all sizes and the outgoing and incoming chairmen agree that there are no competitors within it.
“Each person has a set of experiences in business and they may look at issues slightly differently given their industry backgrounds but the issues are fairly common, they just have different ways of tackling stuff,” Mr Dalziel said.
“For the smaller guys, they’ve got to have their HR hat, they’ve got to have their operations hat, they’ve got to have their finance hat, they’ve got to have all these hats,” Mr Ness said.
“So I think part of this forum is to help them expand and talk to other people about issues.”
Mr Ness is currently organising speakers for the program to discuss topics relating to WorkCover, grants, banking, HR and council permits, while trying to engage Greater Shepparton City Council to join in.
He has some future site visits locked in for the group, including one to the state-of-the-art Walpole Dairy in Yalca.
While he hopes to grow the group, he wants to remain working part-time so he can travel, play golf and hang out with his grandchildren.
He will continue Mr Dalziel’s routine and visit for a week at a time to run the three groups, check in on members at their businesses and network with speakers and new businesses.
The group’s longest-standing member, Peter Foott, who owns Foott Waste in Shepparton, attended its first meeting in 2010.
Mr Foott said on top of the the networking benefits and opportunity to discuss issues with other business owners, the group lifted confidence in business and set benchmarks.
He said the group started strong from the get-go.
“Having a good co-ordinator was key to it, and who we brought to the table — guest speakers — was really important as well,” Mr Foott said.
He said the group helped members’ businesses grow by learning.
“Who coaches the coach? Because the boss is always doing things,” Mr Foott said.
“You can speak about your business; learn what other people are doing and what they’re doing well.”
He said that if he didn’t keep going to meetings himself, he would send people from his company in his place to garner leadership skills.
“Four hours out of a month, it’s not a lot of time to give up. You don’t have to be at every meeting, but when you do commit to it, you look forward to going,” Mr Foott said.
“A leader might not feel comfortable talking to someone within their own business about something, but they can go to this table and talk about things.”
Mr Foott said Mr Dalziel had been the right man for the job but welcomed Mr Ness’ fresh ideas.
“Steve will be another level of change, he’s been the right person for Andrew to hand it on to, which is a really good thing,” Mr Foott said.
Mr Ness wasn’t a member of the group before taking the reins; however, he has plenty of experience in consulting businesses and a strong manufacturing background.
The “Melbourne boy”, who now lives in Geelong, said he knew the region well because he worked at Kraft for years.
Reflecting on his journey, Mr Dalziel said it was terrific to see the group develop a long life of its own after it might’ve started and finished inside its initial two-year contract.
While he will remain involved with the group on some level and keep the friends he’s made along the way, he’s now looking forward to settling into retirement, knowing his legacy is in safe hands.
“It’s been good fun; enjoyable. It’s not a bad way to ease out of your working life,” Mr Dalziel said.
“I had no idea I’d be here for 14 years. My main interest in exiting was finding someone who had an understanding in the way people think and be able to relate to them.
“From what I’ve seen, Steve is able to do that.”
To find out more about what the group does or to apply to join, you can email steven.ness@bigpond.com