OTHERS may disagree, but Travis Dillon feels there’s ample room for three major players in the fiercely competitive farm services game.
The Ruralco boss sees competition as inevitable and healthy for farmer customers, and a good reason for placing a lot of emphasis on having the right attitude and the right people on his company’s 1700-plus payroll.
“Ruralco’s values underpin our success,” he said.
“Developing the right company culture and having the right people in executive level roles and elsewhere have been areas we’ve paid a lot of attention to in the past 11 months.”
“It’s important to live the values we regard as critical to our workplace culture - common sense based on sound decision reasoning; accountability; integrity; leadership by example; aiming high, and loyalty to our people, partners and local communities.”
Mr Dillon took over as managing director after spending much of 2015 as acting chief executive officer in the wake of last May’s resignation of John Maher, who had led Ruralco through much of the past decade’s company expansion phase.
Recently moved from Adelaide to the Sydney head office, he was previously the company’s network operations general manager.
Mr Dillon began his career behind the merchandise counter at an IAMA store at Kadina on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, getting a first hand feel for customer relationships and values.
He became a branch manager and field agronomist in several SA locations before moving to Melbourne with Landmark.
Returning to Adelaide nine years ago he joined CRT, then took on a senior merchandise procurement role with Ruralco executive team.
“As part of our emphasis on promoting the right culture we’ve done a lot of engaging with our network around the bush in the past year,” he said.
“This industry is a people industry so I and others in the executive team need to be very hands-on within our business.”
