Aleem Khan

Grow­ing up in a fam­i­ly busi­ness, in a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, Nicholas Lok Jack start­ed to work at As­so­ci­at­ed Brands Ltd (ABL) from very young.

"I wouldn't want to say child labour, but un­of­fi­cial­ly long be­fore your 18th birth­day. I've lit­er­al­ly grown up in the busi­ness, in the fac­to­ry, in the mar­ket­place, pric­ing prod­ucts, pack­ag­ing them out in sum­mer times and so on; not in­volved in any kind of strate­gic meet­ings back in those days. You're just do­ing work, you're won­der­ing why the heck am I do­ing this," he said.

In hind­sight, he said, Lok Jack un­der­stands how much he learnt do­ing those jobs "re­port­ing to peo­ple and work­ing in the fac­to­ry from very young, spray­ing choco­late, pack­ag­ing things in the sum­mer hol­i­days."

The youngest of Arthur Lok Jack's three sons, Nicholas, 35, first at­tend­ed Maria Regi­na Grade School. He start­ed sec­ondary school at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, but fin­ished at a board­ing school, Trin­i­ty Col­lege (in Lon­don). Af­ter board­ing school, he went on to read for his bach­e­lor's de­gree in busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi. He grad­u­at­ed in 1999 and re­turned to T&T at 21, worked at ABL for about three years, and then re­turned to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi to pur­sue his Mas­ter's in cor­po­rate fi­nance.

Asked why he did not at­tend the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, he said it was not around at that time. "Well, the (UWI) In­sti­tute of Busi­ness (IOB) was prob­a­bly there. I was away," he said.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi al­so of­fered what he want­ed, which was an ac­cel­er­at­ed pro­gramme and he was com­fort­able there. He grad­u­at­ed with his Mas­ter's in cor­po­rate fi­nance in De­cem­ber 2003.

Lok Jack said his time be­tween de­grees was gain­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in new prod­uct de­vel­op­ment at ABL. "That puts you in a good po­si­tion be­cause you get to un­der­stand why I need to make a prod­uct of this size at this price, so you have to un­der­stand the man­u­fac­tur­ing side of it. You have to un­der­stand the mar­ket side of it. What peo­ple want and then raw ma­te­ri­als, lo­gis­tics and pur­chas­ing and all of that," he said.

Up­on his re­turn with a Mas­ter's in cor­po­rate fi­nance, he said he start­ed work­ing full-time at ABL and even­tu­al­ly took on the role of gen­er­al man­ag­er at Charles Can­dy.

Along the way, he al­so be­came a di­rec­tor of Guardian Life, Guardian As­set Man­age­ment and Guardian Gen­er­al. Nicholas Lok Jack's fa­ther, Arthur Lok Jack, is the chair­man of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd.

Two years ago, young Lok Jack joined the board of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and be­came its pres­i­dent on Mon­day for a one-year term.

Asked what mo­ti­vates him to go to work every day, Lok Jack said: "It's an in­nate sense of ful­fil­ment in achiev­ing things that are dif­fi­cult."

He said what makes him tick is that "when I wake up the next morn­ing, I'm again in love with my job. I am go­ing to solve this prob­lem in some oth­er way. What hap­pened yes­ter­day, we'll deal with it."

"Progress is ex­cit­ing and fight­ing some­thing that's go­ing down­ward is al­so just as ex­cit­ing, so it's al­ways ex­cit­ing. Some prod­ucts go up, some prod­ucts are los­ing mar­ket share, some prod­ucts are do­ing well."

Lok Jack thinks man­u­fac­tur­ing is a great train­ing ground for any­one. "You get great train­ing in lo­gis­tics and cus­toms clear­ance. You get great train­ing in pro­cure­ment. You get great train­ing in mar­ket­ing, in pro­duc­tion, in the whole as­pect of man­u­fac­tur­ing, the whole as­pect of brand­ing, and in there, you al­so have cor­po­rate struc­tur­ing," he said.

What de­mo­ti­vates him? Lok Jack cit­ed "re­cur­rent prob­lems that are out­side of your con­trol."

He said al­though he tries not to wor­ry too much about things be­yond his con­trol, those things some­times cost mon­ey.

ABL's heir ap­par­ent?

Nicholas Lok Jack is a sec­ond gen­er­a­tion busi­ness­man. Asked what he thought about the be­lief that the third gen­er­a­tion usu­al­ly be­come po­ets and artists, he said: "I don't know be­cause I don't have any kids right now, but I think peo­ple need to be free to pick their own way. If they want to be po­ets and artists, well, all the great pow­er to them. What they do need to be trained at, though, is how to be own­ers, which is dif­fer­ent from how to be man­agers."

Own­ers eyes are a whole dif­fer­ent set of eyes from man­agers. "As a man­ag­er, you're ac­count­able to some­body. As an own­er, you're mak­ing sure the com­pa­ny has cer­tain val­ues. What are the val­ues we will nev­er com­pro­mise? How do we se­lect man­age­ment to move for­ward with what we want to do, or with what we see for the com­pa­ny?"

His broth­er has two chil­dren, which means the third gen­er­a­tion have been born, but they are very young and it is un­clear what they will want to do as adults. His fa­ther was an on­ly child and had three boys. His grand­fa­ther came from Chi­na and so, there are on­ly sev­en Lok Jacks in the coun­try. His two old­er broth­ers al­so work in ABL.

Asked why he is the ap­par­ent suc­ces­sor, al­though he is the youngest of the three boys, he said, "You have to talk about what peo­ple's wants and de­sires are. I mean, if I want­ed to be a po­et, I would have been a po­et."

He said de­spite who runs the busi­ness and who is the vis­i­ble face of the busi­ness, there is a stronger force known as "fam­i­ly con­sen­sus." Fam­i­ly con­sen­sus is al­ways pushed in­to the shad­ow, he said. "Peo­ple don't see that. It's a very pri­vate thing, so to say that my broth­ers are not as in­volved, or not as in­stru­men­tal in the busi­ness as I am, would be tak­ing it at very face val­ue be­cause of vis­i­bil­i­ty," he said.

He said it takes a lot of trust and "we have a lot of trust in our fam­i­ly. It's a small fam­i­ly, but I know that it gets more dif­fi­cult as fam­i­lies grow. My fa­ther is an on­ly child, which means there are on­ly five of us. There are five (adult) Lok Jacks, now there are two more kids with my broth­er. I think the ma­jor prob­lems come when you have cousins and sec­ond cousins, peo­ple who don't work in the busi­ness are own­ers, but want to have a say in the busi­ness."

The no­tion of go­ing pub­lic

Al­though Arthur Lok Jack and his hold­ing com­pa­ny are ma­jor share­hold­ers in Neal and Massy Hold­ings Ltd, Guardian Hold­ings Ltd and oth­er com­pa­nies, the main fam­i­ly busi­ness is ABL. Asked if ABL might ever go pub­lic, young Lok Jack said: "I don't know. I think that might have to be a dis­cus­sion for the fam­i­ly."

He said he is not averse to it be­cause "we've seen the pros and cons of both pub­lic and pri­vate busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly sit­ting in Guardian Hold­ings and some of the oth­er pub­lic com­pa­nies. I don't think that cor­po­ra­tions are lim­it­ed to pub­lic and pri­vate. Even pub­lic cor­po­ra­tions are struc­tured in many dif­fer­ent ways." He gave the ex­am­ple of Her­shey's Choco­late, which is owned pub­licly, but con­trolled by the Her­shey Trust Com­pa­ny.

Asked if he con­sid­ers him­self to be for­tu­nate, he said: "Of course, I think every­body should con­sid­er them­selves to be for­tu­nate. (That) doesn't mean you don't have your chal­lenges. Every­body has their chal­lenges."

On his ex­pe­ri­ence with trade unions, Lok Jack said the main thing in deal­ing with trade unions is to un­der­stand pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty. "It can­not be a broad brush paint­ed. You can­not tell me be­cause you work for the Gov­ern­ment, you should al­ways get ten per cent; or at (any oth­er) place you work, whether the place makes any mon­ey or not," he said.

Youth at TTMA's helm

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Pri­or to Nicholas Lok Jack, Do­minic Hadeed, 37, had oc­cu­pied the pres­i­den­cy of the TTMA and was the youngest per­son to head the body. On how he ad­dress­es con­cerns about his age, he told the Busi­ness Guardian: "I'd say I have a lot of en­er­gy and I think in to­day's day, age is more a num­ber than any­thing else. The crit­i­cal thing about the TTMA is that it al­lows us to tap in­to past pres­i­dents and past di­rec­tors for coun­sel, and the sup­port or­gan­i­sa­tion of the TTMA, in that re­spect, is fan­tas­tic."

He said it is by ac­cess­ing oth­ers' coun­sel that one can "ar­ti­fi­cial­ly build wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence." He rec­om­mend­ed open­ing one's mind to lis­ten to the "peo­ple who have been through it."

Lok Jack said youth brings with it "a cer­tain en­thu­si­asm" and a healthy "utopi­an view" and that young lead­ers are less fre­quent­ly con­strained by the past, "so you can go out there and re­al­ly try dif­fer­ent and in­no­v­a­tive ways to get things done."

On the ills fac­ing T&T so­ci­ety, he said: "The crime needs to be ad­dressed. I think it's a ma­jor im­ped­i­ment. I have a lot of fac­to­ry work­ers who tell me they can't leave home at 4:30 am un­til things get a lit­tle brighter. Then there are peo­ple who tell me they can't go home at 10 pm be­cause of some of the ar­eas they live in."

Asked if he would ever have po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tions, with­out de­lay, he said no. "Pol­i­tics is just not for me. I'm a longer-term thinker," he said.

On what is next for ABL, he said: "We con­tin­ue to in­vest very heav­i­ly in our busi­ness­es. We just built a new ware­house. We buy new equip­ment every year, if not mul­ti­ple times a year."

He said the com­pa­ny plans to have a strong fo­cus on Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Colom­bia. "We're look­ing at a joint ven­ture in Colom­bia. We're look­ing at ex­port­ing to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca," he said. ABL em­ploys close to 1,500 peo­ple through­out Cari­com, he said.