Poipoia te kākano: what a handful of coffee growers taught me about leadership

As a Northland local, accountant and mum to three kids, I get to know a bit about what’s happening in my backyard. But I was a little surprised to hear about a relatively new player in Taitokerau - the New Zealand Coffee Producers Association. Yup – coffee – here in Northland!

This is a small group of growers, researchers and landowners that are quietly attempting something most people would call impossible: building an entirely new primary industry from scratch. Not scaling one. Not buying into one. Building one, from the seed up.

With my accounting hat on, I spend my days talking with business owners, trustees, land owners and iwi, looking at what makes businesses viable. So when I see a group trying to establish a whole industry that won't return serious value for at least a decade, I’m more than intrigued. But what I’ve found isn't a clever business model. It’s a way of leading.

Collaboration over competition

Most of us are taught to protect our patch. Guard the client list, hold the trade secrets close, win the contract before the other firm does. It's instinctive, and in plenty of situations it's sensible.

So the thing that struck me first about the coffee growers was a phrase they use openly: collaboration over competition. Rather than each grower racing to be first and keeping their hard-won lessons to themselves, they've chosen to learn together — sharing what's working and what's not. One grower's failed crop becomes everyone's saved season. That kind of honesty takes a certain courage. It's far easier to publish your wins than to stand up at a hui and explain what went wrong.

There's a real leadership lesson in that for those of us in professional services, in construction, in healthcare, in any Northland sector you care to name. The leaders worth following aren't the ones with all the answers. They're the ones willing to say "here's what we got wrong, so you don't have to."

Lead as a convener, not a controller

The second thing that caught my eye was how the Association sees its own role. They've been deliberate about this: their aim isn't to own or control the value chain. It's to act as a convener, a connector and a knowledge hub — and then to step back and let the growers themselves become the architects of the industry they're building.

That's a remarkably mature view of leadership. The easy version of leadership is to hold the reins tightly and make yourself indispensable. The harder, better version is to build something that doesn't need you at the centre of it — to create the conditions for other people to succeed and then get out of their way.

I see the same pattern in the best business owners I work with. They're not bottlenecks. They've built teams, systems and relationships that carry the load, so the business is bigger than any one person. That's not a loss of control. That's the whole point.

Kaitiakitanga and the long game

It would be easy to talk about Māori culture as a nice add-on to this story. It isn't. It's woven through the whole kaupapa. The crop trials are taking place on Māori-owned land in Taitokerau, supported through the Ministry for Primary Industries' Māori Agribusiness Extension Programme, with mana whenua at the table from the start. This isn't an industry being built near Māori. It's being built with Māori.

And the values on display are deeply familiar ones. Kaitiakitanga — guardianship of the land — shows up in their commitment to protecting our biosecurity and our low-pest status for the generations who'll farm this whenua long after the founders are gone. Kotahitanga — unity, collective strength — is the very engine of the thing. And the time horizon they've set themselves is telling: ten years and beyond before they expect a premium origin reputation to take hold.

Ten years. In a world addicted to the quarterly result, there's something profoundly grounding about a group of people planting for a harvest they may not personally cash in. That's the long-term thinking our region needs more of, not less.

The whakataukī on their wall says it better than I can:

Poipoia te kākano, kia pūāwai — Nurture the seed and it will blossom.

What it means for the rest of us

You don't have to be growing coffee to take something from this. The principles travel.

Build an industry — or a team, or a firm, or a community organisation — and the same truths hold. Share generously, because a rising tide lifts every boat in the harbour. Lead by enabling others rather than controlling them. Care for the people and the place you're standing on, because none of it works without them. And take the long view, even when everyone around you is chasing the short one.

Great things come from small beginnings. A handful of curious people, a few hundred coffee plants, and a decision to do it together rather than alone — that's how an industry gets built. And, I'd argue, it's how the best leaders are made too.

To the growers, researchers and whānau behind the New Zealand Coffee Producers Association: ka rawe. You're teaching the rest of us more than you probably realise.

Ngā mihi nui.