Profile: Iain Munro
President, IHM Consulting Group
It’s not easy to turn around a languishing business. It takes willpower, savvy and the application of hard-earned experience – exactly the qualities that have made Iain Munro the man he is today. In November, he launched his Calgary-based firm, IHM Consulting Group, to advise companies on managing growth, project management, management system development and merger and acquisition integration.
Munro was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, a seaside community near Glasgow. “My father was in the Royal Navy,” he says. “We moved around quite a bit.” The oldest child of four, he attended boarding school and saw his family only during holidays, allowing him to cultivate a strong sense of self-reliance. At 17, within days of his departure from school, Munro found a job working as an apprentice mechanical engineer. That would prove to be the first step in a long line of jobs that would take him through various industries and to most corners of the world. His higher education includes two engineering diplomas, an MSC and an MBA.
Munro entered the oil and gas business back in 1989, when he started working in Aberdeen, Scotland, a city not dissimilar to Calgary. “Calgary’s a lot bigger,” says Munro. “But one thing I would say is similar is that international flavour. You’ve got people coming in from all over the world that are involved in the oil and gas industry. Calgary’s probably the hub for this side of the world, and Aberdeen is [for] there.”
Munro’s work took him to some of the world’s top oil-producing countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Norway, Venezuela and the U.S. He has served in senior management positions with Precision Drilling, Polar Completions, Smith International and National Oilwell Varco.
As a consultant, Munro is familiar with the typical symptoms of a troubled company. Some businesses neglect to set goals and execute them. Others suffer top-to-bottom from poor communication, causing low morale and a lack of employee commitment. Some business owners, while clever at designing and building new products, they don’t know how to market or grow their business. Munro’s advice: “Stick to your core competencies and find partners who can help you expand.”
When a company enjoys financial improvement, its workers feel empowered – and that, says Munro, makes a company more effective. The way to achieve this is to get everyone focused, set a goal, get the right people involved and identify solutions. The result is “an environment where, at the end of the day, people want to come to work” – and that bolsters the bottom line.
Munro also helps with the tricky process of integration after a merger or acquisition. “Most companies,” he explains, “don’t do a very good job with the integration side of things. They don’t communicate what’s going on; most of the time people end up leaving the company.” Munro has become adept at staunching that flow through his strong communication skills.
And it’s the big challenges that really drive Munro – he thrives on overcoming the odds. What motivates him to do this difficult work? “The satisfaction,” he says, “of seeing positive change.”
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