The economy at the moment is no bed of roses. Print in general is under attack from all sides. So when the New Zealand CEO of a division of a successful international printing group wants to tell you about his way of doing business, it’s worth lending an ear. Especially if his take on things is as unique as David Jupe’s. 

Above all else he believes in doing things well, proceeding slowly and developing a truly worthwhile business relationship. Once that is in place and the trust of the client has been gained, the result is that you’ve earned the right to be involved in the deals and plans much earlier on, which Jupe says is when the “good stuff” really happens.

By way of illustrating this philosophy, the head of Bluestar Group in New Zealand gives us a metaphor to mull over. He starts by describing a close family gathered around a table, sitting down to a well-cooked meal of a slow food like lamb shanks. He mentions the Italians, known for being great wine and diners, and likens the lot to a truly great business relationship. “Above all else, relationships take time,” he says. “There is absolutely no quick-fix solution and you aren’t going to be able to solve anything with kneejerk responses. It takes time, effort, and the goal of really understanding the problem.” Just like you can’t microwave lamb shanks, you can’t expect a great business relationship to happen overnight. This is the core of his message: slow down, and you will have the rewards soon enough.

Earning your place at Jupe’s metaphorical table is a big part of the philosophy. It is not just handed over. “It’s not for whingers. You can’t just rock up and talk about what you don’t like and leach off others. You’ve got to contribute, and everyone’s got to bring something to the table. Busy people need to see value in you being there. And that also means having the ability to make decisions. There’s no point having someone engaged who is going to have to go back and run things past someone else all the time.”

“Your network has value too – as a client, whose network are you going to choose? Who else are your suppliers bringing to the table with them? There’s a whole team, and that team isn’t linear. Traditionally people look at the supply chain and that’s not the whole network, it’s far more holistic than that. Blue Star have a great client network, but broader than that, we are working at getting a seat at the table with other industries where we can share ideas and collectively solve clients problems.

“And building this network means finding people with similar values, whether it’s about responsible printing and long-term sustainability, or something else. You don’t want to end up with a network where all the players are the same, but rather a network with a collection of all the right ingredients. But you absolutely need people with similar values who can collaborate with others.” This collaboration is extremely important in Jupe’s eyes. “You’ve got to be comfortable to share ownership, and part of it is that everyone’s got to have their turn. But don’t confuse it with the terrible political correctness we’ve got going on in New Zealand, the most important thing is the outcome!”

After joining Blue Star in 1997 and starting their print management division, Jupe has turned his hand to making this philosophy a reality. “Now more than ever, I’m trying to refocus our team on the things that matter. Who do we need to be talking to? How do we build a relationship with those people? How do we understand their needs better, and who else do we need to bring to the table to make it credible?”

“And part of that credibility,” he continues, “is in the informality. There is a space for the suits and ties, but the reality is that people are having to do much more in their day now to achieve similar or lower results. People are really busy, and often they’re only comfortable to take some real time out for breakfast to meet if there’s value in it. They’re not going to do it just for the sake of it, but once you have that seat at the table with them, you can begin working on a real relationship.” This informality also helps spark ideas – Jupe is big on getting out of the offices and cubicles into a more relaxed environment. “Only then have you actually got a better chance at being creative. You can’t be creative if you’re under pressure!”

Interestingly, Jupe thinks business in this country has had it too good for far too long. “If we look at our economy over the last 10 years, it’s been too easy for all businesses to be reactive. If a client needed something, people reacted.” Now, says Jupe, if a business wants to survive, it’s time for a change. It makes the current climate a perfect time for his ‘dinner-table’ methods to really make a difference.

“You have a lot of people under a huge amount of pressure at the moment, they’re trying to make tough decisions, and if they’re going to try to do it all on a spreadsheet, it’s going to be even tougher. We all need to refocus on what really matters in business, and what is going to help people when they are facing these decisions.”

And Jupe reckons this ‘new’ way of doing business, isn’t actually that new at all. “It’s getting back to the roots, the way things used to be done. It isn’t a new way of looking at commerce.” He also thinks it’s also a more ‘Kiwi’ way of doing things. “New Zealand is made up of many small businesses and we tend to place value on relationships, and that’s really important.” It’s also not just an ‘easy’ way to do business either, it requires integrity and the ability to be honest if there is something you cannot commit to doing. “You can’t just get together and tell lies to each other!”

This whole philosophy challenges the way many business leaders think. For example. the way that senior staff are so often not involved with their clients at all. Jupe laments about this, saying it is not a way to make people feel heard. “So many of them are so many steps removed from the customers. They would rather interact with emails, RFPs and formal presentations, when actually most people just want to talk and engage with people who are going to listen to them. There is absolutely nothing more important than talking with your customers. No Powerpoint, no powerplays, just common ground.”

Blue Star are also challenging the way their customers think. Often, print is thought of as the ‘last step’. We figure everything else out first, and then contact a printer for a price for putting it on paper. But as Jupe says: “We want our customers to say if it’s anything to do with print or related to print, think of us first. And even broader than that, if it’s how you manage your information, we want to be part of that as well.”

When we ask about the possible ‘hippy’ perception of some of Jupe’s ideas, he tell us about his Masters Degree in business strategy, and laughs about the irony of it. “I think one of the best approaches to strategy is taking the time to get to know the environment you’re in, and the people. Talking about what it is that we really need to be doing, the stuff that doesn’t rank in charts or in people’s strategic plans. It’s in the conversations, exploring opportunities and being comfortable throwing ideas around, and ultimately, trying something.”

 In fact, this is an important distinction, Jupe thinks. “You can’t spend all your time fighting fires. In business we need to have people doing today’s business, yes, but we also need people taking a breath and looking forward, creating a future we can get excited about.”

Jupe is equally philosophical when we ask him about the oft-prophesied death of print.

“Everyone always thinks that new technology will replace the old, but it’s not always the case. I was a small boy when TV came out, and it hasn’t replaced radio even though people said it was going to. In our industry there are a lot of people talking to customers about their latest piece of equipment, but it’s far braver to say ‘I’m interested in what your business problem is and we’ll go away and find a solution.’ I’d rather take the time to understand the problem, and not just peddle technology.

“Again, this is part of stopping and taking the time to smell the roses. More and more businesses need to do that – stop and not panic that the role your service plays is going to be different, but rather figuring out what it’s going to be. First understand what ‘different’ means and then figure out how to make that different thing happen. I think the onus as a printing organisation is on working out what the role of print really is and how we can deliver it well. That could be anything from running on-site print rooms for people, storing all their documentation and providing it when they need it, it could be managing digital documents, it could be back to the basic stuff – just printing their business cards or forms.”

We’ve heard a lot of philosophising from Blue Star’s New Zealand CEO, but Jupe knows he has to do more than just talk. “The best evidence of whether you have a culture that can make all of this stuff work is actually doing it. We started our business 12 years ago with no print management capabilities, and now half of our business in New Zealand is in print and document management solutions. This is reflected in our business structure as well: we don’t have an IT team, we have a business systems team because business systems encompass everything about how we work internally and how our clients interact with us.

“A lot of companies have IT and that’s all back office, they shut the propellor heads out the back and throw pizza under the door. Our view is that business systems are a key part of how our customers interact with us, so we want them involved in helping understand our clients problems.”

Positive in a downturning market, and productive though his industry is under attack, Jupe still manages to make business sound exciting. You could say he’s given us plenty to chew on.