Company-wide clarity and record growth

Haka Tourism Group is an award-winning, New Zealand tourism company. Founded in 2007 by Ryan Sanders, Haka Tourism Group is one of New Zealand’s most exciting, fastest growing and most awarded tourism brands with a strategy firmly based on guided touring brands, vertically integrated with accommodation. 

Wrestling global growth

Eight years ago, having already built a powerful and successful brand, with three distinct arms to the business and three different managers, Ryan knew that to continue to manage and scale a business of this size, he needed help. It had become crucial to invest dedicated time to plot out their growth strategy journey.

“We’d always been growth-oriented, but things were getting to a point where it was too big for me to be across everything, build the brand and grow the business. 

“Each of the business units had their own general manager, so I could be more strategic. In terms of the size of the business, it made sense to put our foot down and really capture the biggest part of the market where we operate.

“We needed to have everyone in the business aligned with our vision and values, believing in our potential and on the same page.

“We’d also never had a board, and I could see enormous value in having an external opinion on our strategy and how we were moving forward.”

An appointment that delivered dividends

An active member of EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organisation) Ryan had already heard about Scaling Up: “I really liked that Scaling Up was a proven business growth framework, and so many people globally had used that framework for amazing success.”

He attended a presentation given by Adrian, and says he knew right away that Adrian’s style and expertise was an excellent match for the Haka Tourism Group culture. 

“I felt a great alignment with Adrian’s communication style, delivery and breadth of knowledge. At Haka, we’re laid back, but we’re very hard workers, so it was just a nice fit. Adrian also has a very consistent and collaborative leadership style and is a great listener.” 

Ryan says Adrian also showed him that the challenges businesses face are all the same. “I loved the fact that Adrian wasn’t a tourism professional but had a breath of experience. He could actually look at our business from a macro point of view and pull out examples across all sorts of industries, which I found amazing.”

With support from Adrian, Ryan navigated the process of stepping away into an overseer and business development role and says this has paid huge dividends.

“Adrian helped me establish my role as outward facing. For that to be delivered successfully across the leadership team, to have the team on board, understanding why my role needed to change and why it was best for the business, was really, really powerful.

“To lead from the front, spend time looking at global macro trends and shining our light externally, instead of being inward facing, was absolutely the biggest thing I got from working with Adrian.”

Company-wide clarity and record growth

Ryan says while the team had previously spent time on their purpose and values, they hadn’t quite ‘nailed it’ right across the business. Working with Adrian, the team detailed a comprehensive, big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG), broke it down into three-year and one-year targets, and adopted the Scaling Up ‘Rocks’ format. 

“If I had to choose two things that completely changed our growth journey it would be the concept of keeping the ‘main thing’, the ‘main thing’ and focussing on Quarterly Rocks, which are key activities that will move the dial in the business. This really anchored the leadership team and gave them a lot more autonomy and accountability. 

“The way we structure our quarterly goals was a real game-changer for us. We all had complete clarity on what everyone was working on. 

“It also gave me more freedom to push those Rocks and broadened the scope of roles, providing greater job satisfaction.”

Ryan says that when he first got in touch with Adrian, they were probably trading at about $5 million. But after appointing Adrian as coach, they grew substantially, trading up to about $35 million by 2020.

“In 2019, we made the Fast 50 as New Zealand’s fastest growing tourism company, also ranking 21st overall across all industries. I can honestly say, hand on heart, we wouldn’t have won a high growth accolade like that without someone like Adrian guiding our way.”