Integrity is its own reward

Ashley Thacker of Ranger Lifting explains how recognition doesn’t happen overnight - but if you stay true to yourself it will come eventually.

We’ve all been there – some days, weeks or months you’ve put in the hard yards and wonder if it was really worth it, as no one seems to have noticed. But every effort, every bit of blood, sweat and tears you pour into your work will ultimately pay a dividend. If building something was easy, everyone would do it. The reality is, sometimes you just have to grind.

That doesn’t mean you should simply be head down and hard at it all the time; that will only take you so far. You must marry a strong work ethic and desire to succeed with a strategic vision and an operational plan if you want to be successful. And in my eyes, there is a fifth element that is also vital but is all too often overlooked – integrity. These fivepillars have helped me to have a positive impact on the lifting community, our business, and my colleagues.

In November, I was honoured to be voted by my peers as the Industry Leader of the Year at the LEEA Awards 2023. Sponsored by this magazine’s sister publication, Lift & Hoist International, the award recognises and celebrates a leader in LEEA’s membership who has been extremely effective in improving and growing their business. The winning candidate needed to show evidence of leadership and dynamism, which resulted in company growth.

I am incredibly proud to have received this recognition from the industry, but it’s important to reflect that I wouldn’t be in a position to be even shortlisted for this accolade if I wasn’t all in on changing our industry for the better.

Putting the work in

I initially encountered LEEA in my early 20s when I travelled to the UK to take a course at its headquarters. I was so impressed that Ranger Lifting became the first LEEA member in Australia, all the way back in 2011. Ultimately, I was accepted onto the LEEA board at just 26 years of age - one of the proudest moments of my life - and served for nine years.

But that was the start of those hard yards I was talking about earlier. We had a strategy for how we wanted to grow LEEA membership in Australia and the wider region, a plan on how to implement it, and then an awful lot of hard graft to make it happen. By the time I stepped down from the main LEEA board there were almost 100 LEEA members across Australasia and there are many more today. But one of the reasons I was able to advocate successfully for LEEA was that we at Ranger Lifting were walking the walk, not just talking the talk. We were LEEA member number one and could stand behind that – integrity in practice.

LEEA’s comments after the awards reflect the work I and others had to put in to grow LEEA and use that as the foundation for further professionalising our industry:

“Ashley is driven by an immense desire to build something better, coupled with a sense of entrepreneurialism and enthusiasm that has been unrivalled both at Ranger Lifting as a company, and in the lifting industry.

“He contributed to raising standards through his work with Australian Standards, input to the establishing of a national ASQA approved Cert IV ASQUA and the LEEA Regional Council in Australia. Taking on leadership roles with LEEA would prove to be challenging from a career perspective. Ashley constantly puts his neck on the line and vocalises his passion for industry change.”

A huge amount of time and effort went into realising those three objectives – improving Australian Standards, creating a national ASQU-approved certification and the establishment of the LEEA Regional Council in Australia. I was a part of all three projects not because I was thinking about awards, but because I fundamentally, wholly believed in them, on every level. You can’t fake it til you make it when you’re trying to effect real change like this. You have to believe it because people need to see it in your eyes if they’re going to believe it too.

Real leadership

In my last Insider column, I talked about how leadership has become another LinkedIn buzzword, and what real leadership actually looks like in our industry. I covered how leadership means looking to continuously improve and taking risks to innovate – but it also means being trustworthy and true to your word.

Continuous improvement is a philosophy I hold dear because it’s the way humanity evolves; can we be better today than we were yesterday? In this way I was able to leverage my position on the LEEA Board to become a committee member with Standards Australia, the nation’s leading non-government, not-for-profit standards organisation. This gave the lifting industry a strong voice when it came to improving safety standards.

Equally, my goal in lobbying LEEA to create a regional council for Australia and New Zealand was not about self-promotion or so I could tick a box and say I’d joined the council – it was to give our industry the credibility it needed to take the next step towards professionalisation. Through the council we were able to develop the first ASQA nationally recognised training course for Lifting Inspectors in Australia – the Cert IV in Lifting Equipment Inspection, Testing and Certification.

It's also why Ranger Lifting is the first LEEA accredited training provider in Australia and has launched the first LEEA-accredited course, covering the safe use of lifting equipment. This course was very much my baby, I poured all my experience and expertise into it, as I felt it was too important to outsource to a third party. It was back to those hard yards again in terms of planning the course, developing module content, writing scripts and even working on the videos. I think it’s the start of something big, that we’ll do what we always do – take this idea and replicate it, making it even better every time.

Family values

If leadership has become a bit of a buzzword, then referring to your business as a family is a complete cliché. However, that is totally unfair to companies like ours who have grown because of their deeply held family values. To us, family isn’t just a term we imported from an HR seminar, it’s in our DNA. The same is true of a lot of Aussie companies; we almost all start as family businesses but some of us lose that ethos along the way.

This is why I am equally as proud to be named the Established Business (NSW & ACT) of 2023 by the Family Business Association. As a result, we now move forward to the overall Family Business Awards that take place at the Family Business Conference – Asia Pacific in May. This means as much to me as the leadership honour I received from my peers.

We’re a family business that has succeeded by attracting and retaining good people. There are many employees who have been with us for over a decade, including two pairs of partners, several sets of siblings and a few fathers who now work with their sons.

I was one of those sons and while I benefited from the incredible work my father had done to build the business, I had to earn my place. I started out as a delivery driver then a factory worker, followed by inspector, supervisor, sales representative, account manager, technical sales manager, general manager and most recently, managing director. Not a bad CV!

Looking back now that was the best way to learn how to be a leader because I got to see the business through the eyes of many different people. Every day I can rely on that experience to help me empathise with my colleagues and understand their perspectives. But most importantly, it means when I ask them to do something, they know that it’s because I know they can do it – after all, I probably did it myself when I was in their shoes. Once again, that’s all about integrity.

Awards are awesome and it’s great to be recognised both as a company and as an individual for what you’ve achieved. But that recognition will only come if you’ve got something real at the heart of what you do. Also, whether you get a medal or a trophy for it is irrelevant, so long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and know that you’ve stayed true to your principles. After all, it’s why we get up in the morning and how we sleep well at night.