Most Trusted Leader award

If there’s one quality that all great leaders share, it’s an ability to admit there’s room for improvement. For Jim Barry, managing director of the Mallow-based Barry Group, being able to take a good honest look at where the business was going resulted in a root-and-branch review of the company that has led to widespread change.

Under Barry’s leadership, the group has grown to a leading wholesale distribution and retail company trading here and overseas. The group, which employs 230 people, supplies 265 franchises under the Costcutter, Carry Out off-licence and Quik Pick symbols, as well as many independent retailers and wholesalers based in Ireland.

The Barry Group, which was founded in 1955 by Jim’s father, James A Barry, has grown and developed at a rapid pace over the past few years. As a man who says he’s prone to what he calls “honesty attacks”, he was unafraid to take a cold hard look at the business during one of these attacks while on a CEOs’ retreat in the US in 2012.

‘Leadership approach’

“We’ve always been a good solid business and we had done well in programmes such as Great Place to Work and Deloitte’s Best Managed Companies awards. But during the attack I asked myself questions about my own leadership approach and how we were doing as a company ,” he says.

“Ultimately, I formed the opinion that being good or very good would not be good enough going forward and that we had to become great,” he adds.

He quickly identified 20 projects and 30 policy changes he believed were needed to build a better business. “We have eight departments within the company and previously we would have seen these as very separate and distinct from each other. Things would get lost between the various departments and some issues would not be properly addressed. We revised this to work more as one team,” he says.

“We have three key pillars that are core to us – our customers, our team and our processes – we felt that if we nailed all of these we would be on the right road,” he adds.

Over the past few years, the company has rejigged departments and roles, sending staff at all levels on training programmes, and improving communications internally through the development of an intranet, a half-yearly written bulletin and staff briefings. The group also recently invested €1 million in a centralised chilled distribution solution, which is expected to add up to €200 million in revenue over five years.

The changes have paid off, with the Barry Group recently announcing plans to open 35 new stores across Ireland this year.“As a leader, you’re always on trial,” Barry says. “My approach is to be honest and upfront because you can’t force people to follow you. Ultimately, you have to create an environment in which people will trust you and be happy to go in your direction.”

Check out Jim Barry's full interview here.