KEY POINTS:
Two years ago Jim Doyle left his role with American conglomerate Brunswick with the intention to semi-retire.
Starting at 5am was commonplace for the former chief executive of New Zealand technology darling Navman - then owned by Brunswick - and after nearly a decade with the company, he
wanted a better work-life balance.
He spoke of his intentions to his US bosses, who offered him a role as chief operating officer for Brunswick's New Technology division, overseeing the division's seven companies, which included Navman.
He stayed in that role for six months.
"It was a lot of travel - most of the other companies are all in the US and I spent a lot of time on planes and a lot of time away from my family."
But semi-retirement really only lasted a year.
In the past few months, Doyle has been working 70 hours a week as electronic transaction company Cadmus looks to merge with larger rival Provenco.
He has been a Cadmus director for the past 18 months, and if 75 per cent of shareholders from both companies approve the merger on Wednesday, he will become CEO of the newly merged entity, which has yet to be named.
Doyle said a merger was still not a foregone conclusion.
"We would expect that the majority of shareholders would see that there's more potential upside for them as a collective company.
"But at the end of the day, there may be people who don't think it's the right thing to do.
"From the majority of the feedback that we've had it seems to be that this is a sensible, logical thing to do. If you look at the Navman experience - for us to grow from $3.5 million to $100 million took us seven years. To go from $100 million to $500 million only took us 2 1/2 years. Once you've got scale, you can really start to do something."
But if it does not happen? "We'd have to have a look at how we can then take Cadmus in a different direction."
Doyle has come a long way from his native Edinburgh, where he left school at 16 to take up an electronics apprenticeship.
"Even back then I knew that Scotland wasn't the place for my long- term future. It was a nice country but I didn't really want to live there constantly. It's generally a cold, wet, miserable, rainy type of country."
So he came to New Zealand - via South Africa. He left Scotland for South Africa in 1982, working in a variety of operational and production management roles.
His last role there, as general manager for operations at an electronics manufacturer, came at a time when the country was embarking on a programme of electrification.
"We were putting electricity into a lot of the townships and giving everybody electricity."
Some 37,000 circuit breakers were being made by the company daily.
But South Africa did not feel like home. His wife Joanne, a Liverpool native whom he met in South Africa, did not want to return to the UK, so they looked at places that would be ideal to raise their two daughters.
It came down to two countries: Australia and New Zealand.
"In those days the economy was better here. Education for children was perceived to be better in New Zealand than Australia. Unemployment was relatively low, so really it had a lot of the key factors."
They arrived in January 1994, and within a month, he secured a job as operations manager for car stereo company Alpine Electronics. It was an exciting time for the company, which was then starting to make and design its own products for the automotive industry.
It was while there that he met Peter Maire, founder of Navman, or Talon Technology as it was then known. He joined the company as general manager in 1997, when revenue was just $3.5 million.
By the time US conglomerate Brunswick bought the company in 2004 for $108 million, it was generating revenues in excess of $100 million.
The sale came with the proviso that key people such as Doyle remained with the business for three years. Things went smoothly for a while, but as the release date drew near, the situation became "difficult" for the American owners.
"They had what they regarded as a very successful New Zealand company but the key people who had been the main drivers and leaders for the business were all coming up to their, shall we say, 'their handcuffs being removed'.
"The difficulty is they chose a couple of the wrong people to put in, where the culture of the people they put in wasn't really in line with the Kiwi culture that we had generated at Navman." That led to an exodus of staff, including chief operating officer Steven Newman, head of human resources Christine Canfield and marine division vice-president Marc Michel.
The experience reiterated to Doyle a tenet he's always held on to: communicating. "I personally believe it's all about people. And people perform how you manage them."
Navman used to hold regular company updates, where all staff would get together once a month to discuss the key things the company was trying to achieve.
When Doyle started, everyone could fit into a medium-sized boardroom. Before he left, they were taking 10 busloads of people to North Harbour Stadium in order to fit everyone into one room.
He intends taking that strategy to the merged Cadmus-Provenco entity.
"By communicating like that, it creates a lot of alignment across the company, because everybody - no matter what position you're in - you know what you're doing today has got a purpose for something else. People feel part of the business."
If it goes ahead, restructuring the merged companies will be his first priority. Doyle sees clear overlaps. Cadmus is very much a payment technology company, while Provenco has four different business units: its distribution business Vantex, payments, technology and retail automation.
"What we intend to do is to have two businesses. One is the Vantex business and the other one is actually combining the Cadmus company and Provenco's payments, technology and retail automation as one business unit."
That will mean some redundancies, although until a merger happens, the scale of it cannot be determined.
"The intention is to get in and do that very quickly, because that's not fair on the individuals of the company."
Regardless of the merger's outcome, Doyle will remain busy. He owns his own technology consulting company, is on the board of four companies and is adviser to another.
He is also director of Peter Maire's investment company, Tahia, and he is on a Government's working group.
"It would be easy to sit on the beach and play golf every day, but that's not the right thing to do, and I'd probably go nuts. I see New Zealand as home and therefore I'd like to get involved and help as many companies grow as possible."
JIM DOYLE
CEO-designate of the proposed merged Cadmus-Provenco entity
* Age: 46
* Education: St Kentigern's, Edinburgh
BComm and degree in operational management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
* Married to Joanne, with daughters Teri, 20, and Kelsey, 16
* Passions: Avid golfer, soccer devotee and All-Blacks follower
* Career highlights
2006 - present: Owner of technology consulting company Ecosswi; Chairman of Fusion Electronics and baggage handling company BCS; Director of Cadmus and Motion Industries; Adviser to electronic measurement company Actronic
2005 - 2006: Chief operating officer, Brunswick New Technology
2004 - 2006: Chief executive, Navman
1997 - 2004: General manager, Navman
1994 - 1997: Operations manager, Alpine Electronics
1986 - 1993: General manager operations, Circuit Breaker Industries, South Africa.
