Imre Mencshelyi: 40 years as a leader

Reflections on learning and leadership -

Imre Mencshelyi’s life experience has tempered the way he assesses people, with the result that there’s been a lot of gut feeling in his dealings with workers, clients, governments and industry in more than 40 years with Western Australia’s Cooperative Bulk Handling (CBH).

Mencshelyi retired early last year after fifteen years as CEO of the grain handling and marketing and export company which has grown over nearly 80 years into one of Australia’s biggest agricultural concerns.

“Imre has been an outstanding, innovative, courageous and inspiring leader," – Neil Wandel, Chair of the CBH Group board.

But in Mencshelyi’s case, retirement may not be entirely accurate. He’s growing table olives, producing quality olive oil and running sheep on a farm at Karridale south of Margaret River, part of a group of landholders committed to realising the capabilities of the region’s Mediterranean climate, olive growers, farmers and horticulturalists among them.

Mencshelyi hasn’t completely cut his 40-plus year ties with CBH. He’s still executive chair of the Singapore-based Interflour Group, a joint venture between CBH and Indonesia’s Salim Group, which owns mills in Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Mencshelyi was training as a geologist in the late 60s, working during semester breaks as a broom pusher with CBH when the company offered him a management cadetship.

He acknowledges that the pathway from sweeper to CEO may still exist but that the transition today would be far more difficult than in the era when industry knowledge was one of the keys to success. So too was longevity and Mencshelyi says that CBH supported him throughout his career, putting him through university and other courses as recently as five or six years ago. Apparently, it was never too late to learn – even for the man who had been instrumental in the 2002 merger between CBH and the Grain Pool of WA, the latter which held a statutory monopoly over the export of WA barley, canola and lupins.

“Today’s CEOs work to a management model,” he says, “bringing their own unique take on leadership to a business that may be needed for five to ten years.

“They wear out their uniqueness and then they move on.”

Mencshelyi shared some of his insights to leadership with participants in course 16 of the ARLP when they visited the west in June. He says his isn’t an MBA or management textbook approach but one based on 25 years of leadership experience.

He says there’s always an aspect of inclusiveness to good leadership and cites his experience coaching a football team in the WA wheatbelt. “There’s no such thing as a person of no value … everyone has a unique quality that they bring to a game, to management and to leadership.”

“Enigmatic; he has an aura, a passion for the industry that inspires others. He made decisions that always had the support of others.” –  Mick Daw, manager of CBH’s Esperance terminal and graduate of ARLP Course 15).

Mencshelyi has his own A-F of leadership selection criteria and says that they are essential reckoners in exploring and expanding on issues that arise, for example, during an interview.

“Once you know what you’re looking for in a person, you can line them up against each criterion – Action, Bravery, Credibility and Charisma, Decisiveness, Enthusiasm and Education and Fit for Future.

“I get by on assessing against four of the six but find that people must stack up against fitness for the future … it’s essential in all cases.”

Mencshelyi says he’s still got it wrong a couple of times – not a bad record given the time he spent with CBH – but that he’s always learnt from mistakes, turning a negative into a positive.

Without trying to be a sponge, soaking up the best qualities in all those around you, Mencshelyi says it’s desirable to study two people from outside your family circle and to pick those of their attributes you aspire to most.

And finally, never be afraid to appoint someone who’s smarter than you are – provided of course that they’re fit for the future.

 It would follow that a serious sweeper wears out several brooms in the course of a lifetime.

A bit like grandpa’s axe really … how many heads did you wear out and how many handles did you break chasing rats? Thus, the provenance of a broom may be a little iffy.

That didn’t stop colleagues from presenting Mencshelyi with what they claimed was his first broom – appropriately painted gold – at a function in Perth attended by the CBH Board of Directors.

The occasion was to mark 40 years of service by Mencshelyi’s first boss Spike Jones, a senior CBH plant operator at Merredin who Mencshelyi says, “… claims he taught me everything.”

Astonishingly, Jones is still in the same job.

It appears that loyalty was one of the qualities he inspired in his young pupil.