DEFENCE
Q&A: Ian Harman, CEO, New Zealand Defence Industry Association Now with his feet firmly under the desk, Line of Defence speaks with New Zealand Defence Industry Association CEO Ian Harman about Defence-Industry engagement, Covid challenges, and his vision for the NZDIA.
LoD: You’re professional experience spans several sectors and job roles. What are the key strands that connect these and that have led you to your current role as NZDIA CEO?
Ian Harman, CEO, New Zealand Defence Industry Association
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IH: I was trained as an aircraft engineer with Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group in England a long time ago. I loved aircraft and aviation, and working with the military came at an early age when I started my apprenticeship at the age of 16. I was on a team that carried out modifications for the fleet that went down to Stanley for the Falklands War, and in the process garnered a very good view into how the military works and how things change during a conflict situation. It was a very interesting time. Because I was on that team I got my first really good exposure to managing people and stakeholders because we did six months’ work in six weeks. I was seconded for a while to RAF Lyneham and then became an engineer on the road for many years, before moving into aviation recruitment. These were the glory days of recruitment in England when we were supplying teams all over Europe for the winter programmes. That provided very good experience in learning how to manage people and projects and dealing with the stakeholder expectations aspect of projects. Our guys came in for six months of the year to Germany and did all the heavy maintenance on
the aircraft, and I had a knack of relationship building and stakeholder management and really enjoyed managing people and leading the teams. Hopefully these were the strands that the [NZDIA] Board saw when they asked me to take the role.. plus I’m very calm, and I think that’s an asset when you’re dealing with Defence and military. The limelight side of it was never of interest to me! I always preferred being the one in the background that quietly made everything work. LoD: What is your vision for the NZDIA, and which direction(s) do you see the Association heading over the next couple of years? IH: The first direction is ‘backwards’, a retro-step back to being a more face-toface, hand-shaking, eye-to-eye contact operation. I understand the need for virtual events, but it wasn’t really how I – or members generally – envisaged the NZDIA being. The second direction is to expand the scope of what the NZDIA does. The first is relatively easy. It was really about picking up the phone and talking to the members and main stakeholders, and asking “What is it that you actually want? What do you like? What don’t you like? What haven’t you liked? What do you see different?” And it was almost unanimous that they wanted to go back to being in the same
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