Fantastic Holdings Limited

The Business

Fantastic Holdings Limited is an ASX listed conglomerate of furniture and bedding retail and manufacturing companies with operations in Australia, China and Vietnam with group turnover of $500M. It has five retail brands and four manufacturing companies and operates 130 retail outlets in Australia with aspirations to further expand its retail network and manufacturing facilities throughout Asia.

Its retail brands include Fantastic Furniture, Plush, Original Mattress, Le Cornu and Ashley Furniture Homestore. They all fulfil a market niche in their target markets.

The Coachee

Stephen Heath was appointed to the role of Managing Director and CEO in 2013 and has 20 years’ retail experience. He has been CEO of other retail companies such as Rebel Sport Limited.

The Challenge

Stephen realised that the role at Fantastic Holdings included some unique operational characteristics that was leading him into new territories. To ensure that he was well equipped to lead such a diverse company, he engaged Hewsons to prepare a tailored program to suit his situation.

“The program was thought provoking and challenged the lens that I was using to assess the circumstances that I was finding myself in. The program equipped me with tools to help evaluate people and situations from new perspectives that helped me to improve my performance.”

The Solution

New perspective helped Stephen to more readily operate outside his comfort zone with renewed confidence to a point where he could expand it and to learn to challenge the status quo with integrity.

Two of the program philosophies that impacted Stephen’s perspective greatly was:

• law of mutual exchange; and
• the world view model.

“My Coach, Richard, was extremely diligent in achieving the insights into my professional and personal situation to tailor a program that he knew would challenge and develop me in a way that would deliver the value outcomes that I was after. I set goals at the beginning of the program and at the beginning of each session we agreed the outcomes that we were looking to achieve to ensure that we were working towards achieving the goals.”

“Learning to understand my own contribution to the challenging situations I was finding myself in and being able to see things from other people’s perspectives were both insightful and powerful. Adopting this approach when dealing with challenging situations has certainly helped me to build trust with stakeholders which in-turn has led to reaching more effective decisions and improved outcomes.”

The Benefits

“Although the program was demanding, I thoroughly recommend it to any leader who aspires to achieve improved performance through the power of their people. Hewsons’ program will help you to see things from a new perspective that will lead to higher engagement of your team and ultimately better and more satisfying results.”