Carl Bates: young gun

Carl Bates CFInstD has always been on the fast track. And Covid-19 is not slowing him down.

Bates describes himself as an entrepreneur and a business owner. The 39-year-old is much more. He is also a director, an international speaker, a mentor and an author. He has written two books. He has founded five companies.

His biography says he bought his first rental at the age of 15, started university at 16, and gained his first independent directorship at 18 and chief executive role at 22. He has developed a leading-edge profiling technology, won awards for business, the latest among them for the Lockdown Collection in Africa.

Already, he is a Chartered Fellow at the Institute of Directors, one of the youngest to be awarded the designation.

Whanganui-born Bates lives in Sanson in the lower North Island and has found a way to adapt during the pandemic and keep all his interests and initiatives ticking along.

It has also given him time to stop and think about the more pressing issues that directors should be discussing and acting upon.

On top of the list are the “headline challenges like climate change and diversity”.

Bates and his team have just released their survey of directors’ fees, performance and diversity in Africa, particularly for privately held and family businesses, and one of the results is the direct correlation between the number of ethnicities in the boardroom and the profitability of the business.

“Diversity includes age,” Bates says. “I was very lucky that I got my first directorship at the age of 18. I joined the IoD in 2003 and now I’m a Chartered Fellow. Age is an important part of that diversity and means getting young directors into the boardroom.”

Also high on his list is a four-letter word that can strike fear into boardrooms – “risk”.

“There is a concerning trend to try to remove all risks from customers, from stakeholders, from shareholders, from government, from the community. We have to be careful that we do not make directors and boards the punching bag for everything that goes wrong.

“If we try to remove all risk, we ultimately remove all return. Business is a correlation between risk and return. You have got to have a way in which that is managed. While that trend has a big impact for directors who ultimately take on that risk, what it also does is move directors’ focus away from taking risks around things like, how do we deal with climate change? How do we promote diversity? There is balance that we need to find. It’s a real concern.”

Bates says the dissemination of information in media is also a confronting issue for directors.

“There is a challenge in traversing the changing way in which information in media is released into the world and how quickly that can impact a business’ performance and social standing. I’m not saying that this should be a cover for things that go wrong in business – absolutely, there are times when businesses should be removed because of the way they have acted and what they have done.

“The social media culture we are now living in means that directors have got to be conscious of how something that happens within our business, within our teams, at our front door, could overnight fundamentally change our organisation.

“As a director of a business that affects thousands, one person’s actions can have a negative impact – for valid reasons – yet at the same time affect the trajectory of thousands of other employees, or in a small business, maybe 10 people.

“As directors we need to understand how we to respond in those moments – what I call critical moments – and achieve what is in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders.”

Bates is particularly proud of the skills he has developed and now putting to good use in not-for-profit and charitable causes. These include the Lockdown Collection company in Africa that raised over NZ$400,000 for vulnerable artists, providing food, study and income through the pandemic and more recently as chair of Fielding and District Promotions.

He says he also took great enjoyment from chairing a primary sector board as an independent and helping navigate the animal health business through changes, growing it four-fold and then being bought out by a private equity company.

“If it wasn’t for the role we played as independent directors in that journey, supporting and guiding the relationship between the founders (the veterinary scientists) and the private equity player, then it could have gone a very different way.”

Bates’ drive comes from a very young age and the examples set by his parents.

“I was lucky enough to grow up in a family where my parents were in business. We went through some hard times and some good times. I really got to understand the value of hard work and when you do something you can impact your own life and those around you. That set up a foundation for me to go on and do that sort of thing.”

Bates currently sits on four boards, all paid appointments, outside of his own businesses and the charitable work.

He sits on a Manuka honey export business in New Zealand; an Australia-based packaging business that has manufacturing in New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji; a family conglomerate out of Ghana that has large interests in Africa and Asia; and an automotive distribution business in southern Africa.

He has a strong business connection with Africa after living in Johannesburg for 10 years.

He is a founding partner and executive director of Sirdar, a professional services firm, and co-founder and executive director of Contribution Compass, a personality profiling business used by partners around the world and in New Zealand by some DHBs for nurses, doctors and senior leaders.

Sirdar works with directors, training, developing and running boardrooms for predominantly private and family businesses, but also listed and governmental organisations across the African continent.

“Sirdar has offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nairobi (Kenya) and Accra (Ghana), and works through Skills Consulting Group here in New Zealand. Over the years, I also spent a lot of time speaking at – and running – events for a number of IoDs around the world, a number of sister institutes to the New Zealand IoD, including in Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya, Sri Lanka and in the Middle East.

“We are also involved in a procurement business enabling black South African entrepreneurs to become part of the supply chain, particularly in relation to government and large corporate contracts, providing the funding to uplift that sector of South African society.”

Bates, who also has interests in residential property built up over a number of years, says he is looking to step away from some of his more business-focused activities and explore ways he can contribute more to society in coming years.

The small town of Sanson may barely register on the world, but he has found a way to stay connected, adapting a workfrom-home model during the pandemic.

In the year prior to Covid-19, Bates says he clocked up 92 flights to fulfil directorship and business commitments, as well as speaking engagements around the world on governance and entrepreneurship.

“What Covid did for me was create a reset. We rebased in New Zealand after attending a family wedding, packing our home in Johannesburg on Zoom, and waiting for the container to arrive.”

He burns the midnight oil on Zoom to fulfil all his board commitments, but the benefits are being able to take his son to kindergarten in the mornings, go for a run or bike ride and to the Friday Farmers Market in Feilding. The things he could rarely do before his globe-trotting.

“We found we could run four- or eight-hour workshops on Zoom really effectively. We have found a mix but it’s not easy.”