Lither-ship in cement

By marrying an engineer’s boldness and analytical skills with an ability to partner in formal and informal ways, Brian Bruce has grown the South African construction leader, Murray & Roberts, to over $4 billion in revenue while restoring profitability. Conrad Viedge (Wits Business School, Johannesburg) has written a case on this leader.

In the late 1990s after nearly a century of existence, South Africa’s premier construction firm, Murray & Roberts, began to lose its way. It started to record losses and its share price lost over 90% of its value. It was in 2000 that a 30 year veteran of the firm took over the controls. By 2008 Brian Bruce had restored profitability and had overseen a doubling of the group’s revenue (see box for more on Murray & Roberts’s history and business).

What were the leadership skills that Brian Bruce had acquired in his work for Murray & Roberts that he then called upon to help restore the group’s fortunes? Conrad Viedge, a Senior Lecturer in the Human Resources area at the Wits Business School (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa) has studied Brian Bruce’s leadership style (see case reference below): “Brian Bruce has served and now leads his company with a combination of optimism, courage, patience and openness. This has allowed him to excel at taking on difficult projects, overcoming frustration and bringing outside views to bear on problems."

Hands-on, can-do
After obtaining a Civil Engineering degree at the University of Cape Town - his studies were paid in part by a bursary from Murray & Roberts - Brian Bruce joined the firm in 1972 and has worked for them since, except for a one-year outside stint in 1979.

He is a hands-on man. He built a reputation early on as the engineering equivalent of a turnaround specialist. One of his first projects, in 1974-75 involved righting a troubled railway bridge project. He relishes challenges and seeks out the experience that results from the confrontation with fearsome tasks: “The first engagement with any daunting project evokes fear of the unknown ahead. But as you succeed, you gain confidence, become secure in yourself, your capabilities and eventually you become fearless. I am a great believer in building up experience.”

In his case, a can-do attitude culminated in have-done-successfully projects. In the 1980s Bruce was twice awarded the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) Gold Medal for Outstanding Construction Achievement. These early successes were rewarded by a managing director position in 1985. This did not however signify a retreat from the field into the office. In particular, he was chosen to lead Murray & Roberts’s reintroduction into the African contracting market from 1989.

Be patient, take charge
As mentioned above, Murray & Roberts went into a severe tailspin in the 1990s. It was at this point that Bruce exercised two other qualities: patience and forwardness. He could have left the company but did not for at least two reasons. First, his personal experience told him that people who moved elsewhere in frustration did not necessarily move up. Second, he believed in the South African market, in Murray & Roberts’s potential (see chart below) and was willing to wait for an internal leadership opportunity to open up.

When the board started looking for a new leader from outside the company, he addressed his application to the board and, availing himself of the politicking skills acquired in all those turnaround projects, he was appointed Group Chief Executive in 2000, two years before the centennial of the company.

As befits an engineer, Bruce brings an analytical approach to a problem that needs turnaround. He believes that you cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it in the first place. To get the facts of the problem you need to talk to the individuals concerned at different operation levels. As these people have often not been given the opportunity to express their views, this often suffices to get the necessary facts.

The next step is personal engagement in view of an acceptable solution. As Bruce explains, “I don’t just hand the problem over, I take personal ownership of understanding the issues and solutions.” But ownership does not equate to one-sidedness. Bruce tries to avoid absolutes: “I don’t believe there is any absolute truth just as I am not about absolute victories. This would mean there must be an absolute failure on the other side and you never reach a resolution if it is about absolute anything.”

Be open, learn to partner
Linked to Bruce’s distrust in absolutes, is his belief in openness which, as he sees it, builds trust. Accordingly Bruce has created a number of communication forums, including one called “Ask Brian” in which personnel can access him anonymously. He gets 15 to 20 messages a week ranging from the more individual (e.g. on discrimination) to the more general (on strategic opportunities). Given this emphasis on openness, it is no surprise to learn that Bruce distrusts hierarchy. “I’m anti-hierarchical. People follow leaders. I’m a non-militarist and basically against the concept that people are followed because of their positional power.”

Murray& Roberts, at its outset a partnership, is built on an ability to partner. For example on the famous Carlton Centre skyscraper project in the 1960 Murray & Roberts partnered with an American specialist in tall buildings. In the 1990s for an aluminum smelter, it allied itself with a Canadian specialist. And today when entering an international market, it always works with a local partner.

Partnerships are difficult in that they require common purpose and trust but they have tremendous upside potential: “Partnership is based on the premise that 1+1>2, that is the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Which leads to one of Bruce’s interesting formulae: in the 1980s the CEO of Compaq enjoined leaders to choose who to compete with and cooperate with everyone else. Taking into account the fragmented nature of the construction business, Bruce has revised that formula: “Choose who to partner with and compete with everyone else.”

Along with openness and partnering goes a propensity to network. While partnerships are formal, instrumental alliances, networking can be viewed as the formation of informal, more gratuitous alliances. Bruce is clearly good at spreading himself wide both from a disciplinary and geographical standpoint.

One example is his collaboration with Roger Flanagan, a professor in the School of Construction Management and Engineering at the University of Reading. Bruce invited Flanagan to present a seminar on the changes that might shape the industry in South Africa in the 21st century. Flanagan suggested to Bruce that an organization in Murray & Roberts, the Engineering Management Services, was a hidden strategic gem. Bruce worked for that organization in the 1990s and industrial design, one of EMS’s fortes, has evolved into a strategic differentiator for Murray & Roberts.

Bruce’s networking efforts have taken him to the Major Projects Association at Oxford in the UK as well as to the Engineering and Construction Board of Governors of the World Economic Forum. It was at the World Economic Forum that he was able to meet one of his favorite authors, Paolo Coelho.

Bruce ties one last leadership trait, faith, to Coelho’s work. “Coelho’s journey is to explore faith, our ability to believe that something will happen in the future that we have no proof exists”. Transpose that to the business world: “Success is not in external factors. It’s in our faith that we can deal with the external factors. It is a leader’s responsibility to convince people to believe in a future for which there is no guarantee”.

Reference:
ECCH 309-117-1
"Brian Bruce: New Century Leader"
Conrad Viedge and Eulalie Metton
Wits Business School, University of the Witwatersrand

Published September 2009