Interview: Robin Moore, CEO of Nampak Flexible

October 18, 2011

n a recent interview, CEO Robin Moore of Nampak Flexible discussed his experience with Grid International, who he has been working with for the past 4-6 years. Since going through Grid training, the company has experienced an exponential profit increase. In 2009, the team began coming together from the initiatives implemented in the meetings. In 2010, they began to see significant results, leading to Nampak Flexible receiving the prestigious Chairman Award for the Best Business of the Year 2010, outscoring other businesses in control and risk management, and doubling the sales of regional and international competitors.

Nampak Flexible, who produces packaging for corporations like Unilever, Mars, Cadbury’s, and Frito Lay, says that their success today is far from where they were seven years ago, when the business struggled to stay afloat after a series of acquisitions and mergers. Moore decided to first assess their working culture before they focused on increasing profit. As employees were introduced to company practices, each with their own schema regarding working culture, Moore realized they needed to “create their own culture in the business” if they were going to grow collectively as an international business.

 At first there was no clear strategy, except communication barriers–made even stronger by the presence of racial, hierarchal, and cultural barriers–needed to be broken. Moore describes the former company environment as a “shoot the messenger” atmosphere, where bad news was hidden in order to maintain morale. Moore realized that aversion of issues and lack of communication was detrimental to business. “You want to get this whole candor idea into your business. If you know what the issue is, you can fix it. If you don’t know it exists, you can’t fix it.”

After training 150 employees through the Grid Culture change process, Moore is working on what the company has deemed the “650 Project”, denoting the amount of employees they expect to go through the same process, which was set to begin August 2011. “What we’ve realized is, given the squeeze on middle management, we need to take the principles of Grid all the way down the line.”

Moore plans to continue the process because he firmly believes that true profitability comes from continuous reevaluation and change. “We said in the beginning that we wanted to embark on a group progress because it would be the glue that held everything together. Grid has helped us to bring all the people on board. Grid has opened people’s minds to change and to operating differently. They understand that individuals are different but you have to create organization values that everyone subscribes to, and that will help pull you in the right direction.”

See the interviews here:

2008 Interview

2011 Interview, Part I

2011 Interview, Part II