When Edmonton’s Mike Duff counsels people to pursue their dreams, they might be wise to lend him an ear.

Duff followed his dreams – all the way from his native Sydney, Australia – and today is president, chief executive officer and sole owner of a remarkable made-in-Alberta success story – Design Group Staffing Inc.

Under Duff’s stewardship, Design Group, a supplier of temporary and contract staff to the Canadian workforce, has flourished in recent years.

Jack Dagley, for Business Edge
Mike Duff, president and CEO of Design Group Staffing Inc., says manager need to tap the creativity of their employees to maximize their abilities.

The company, which operates out of six Canadian offices including Edmonton, Calgary and Red Deer, boasted revenue of $114 million last year and offers a temporary workforce of 1,450 people through four divisions – technology, industrial, office/clerical and information technology.

The company has also been named to a prestigious annual list of Canada’s best-managed private companies for the past three years.

“When you follow your dreams,” says the 56-year-old Duff, who also owns Edmonton auto dealership Devonian Hyundai & Subaru City, “anything can happen.”

1. During a boyhood in Sydney, what career did you fancy?

“I always wanted to be a motor mechanic. I liked fixing cars. My school counsellor thought I could do a little better than being a motor mechanic, so I did an apprenticeship as an electrician.”

2. What brought you to Canada from Australia in 1971?

“I did what a lot of Australians did, at least in those days. I went on a one-year working holiday. My intention was to go to Montreal, because it seemed like a romantic city. But I didn’t get there. I ended up in Toronto. Then, I came to Edmonton on an assignment as an electrical designer and never left. For four years, I probably thought I was going to go home, but the longer you’re away from somewhere, the more that new place starts to feel like home.”

3. Who has had the greatest influence on your life?

“In my career, it was someone who pretty well convinced me that I could do better than I thought I could do myself. That was my boss in Australia, Ron Powell. He was a great inspiration and driver for me to do better. Anytime I didn’t think I could do anything, he’d always convince me that I could do it.”

4. What philosophy has worked for you in business?

“I’d say what’s been important is in (giving) more to our customers. I think at the end of the day providing more to our customers and making a profit are the two keys.”

5. What motivated you to start Design Group in 1976?

“I think it was more a case of opportunity and being at the right place at the right time. I worked for Canadian Bechtel, and I saw the demand, with oil prices rising rapidly and inflation rising. There was a fairly big demand for technical people in Alberta. There were no companies really here that specialized in supplying engineering and technical manpower staff. I started with a $400 office with a shared answering service and a payroll that was probably in the tens of thousands of dollars. It was certainly less than $50,000.”

6. What has been the key to the rapid growth of the company in recent years?

“I think the struggle for me was going from where you’re dealing with most of your customers yourself to bringing good people into the organization and growing that way. It’s a hard transition going from doing everything yourself to delegating and developing people.”

7. Describe your management style?

“I think it’s a little bit changeable. Generally speaking, it’s pretty collaborative. When the chips are down, it’s a little more authoritarian, I think. Generally, I like to have everybody involved in the decisions we make or at least have them have a say in decisions.”

8. What have you learned about maximizing staff potential and instilling loyalty?

“I think I’m still learning, of course. I think one of the key things in allowing people to work to their potential probably goes back to something my boss (Powell) said to me. I’d go to him and say: ‘Boss, look, I haven’t done this before and I don’t think I can do it.’ And he’d say to me: ‘Mike, all you have do is figure out what you don’t know before they figure out you don’t know it.’ So, to some degree, I think challenging people is important. People don’t want to come to work and hang their brain up at the door. So if you can challenge people to use their potential and grow, I think that’s the key.”

9. How has the job-placement market changed since the early days of Design Group?

“In the early days, it was not very competitive, and fees were higher. I’ve got a 16-year-old kid (Robert) who says: ‘Dad, you’re lucky you started your business when you did, because you’d have a tough time today.’ And some of that’s true. I think it’s a lot more competitive today. The clients or customers are a lot more sophisticated in the buying of temporary services.”

10. How has technology and the Internet affected your business?

“It has cost us a lot of money. We’ve just installed web-based recruiting software across the company that has cost us over $500,000. I’m not sure if the productivity has been realized, where we’re getting better at using some of the management capabilities of the data that we have in our database. I guess speed in some markets like Calgary is very important. It’s a need, but I don’t know if you can realize a lot of benefits from it other than real dollars.”

11. How difficult is it to recruit recruiters for your company?

“That’s a tough thing, because very few of us in life start out saying, ‘I want to be a recruiter.’ Therefore, there aren’t many people necessarily looking for a job as a recruiter. It’s a little like choosing salesmen. It’s pretty hard to determine success. It’s very difficult in the beginning to tell if they’re going to make it.”

12. How has the economic downturn of the past year or so affected your operation?

“In Alberta, it really has not affected us at all, surprisingly. Our operations in B.C. and Ontario have been pretty adversely affected. Our business is probably down 10 to 20 per cent in Ontario and 20 to 30 per cent in B.C. We had some exposure to smaller technology companies in Vancouver that were bad debts. Yes, some of them folded. Business in Alberta has remained about the same.” 13. What jobs are most difficult to fill?

“I think in the engineering and technical areas, it’s always hard to find good people in the instrumentation areas. It’s particularly hard to find people that have experience with the new 3-D piping.”

14. How do you see life changing in the workplace of the future?

“I’d say that employees would want more and more, benefits-wise, and they’d want flexibility in their jobs. I think women, who are a major part of the workforce, will have a need for more flexibility to deal with their children and to work from home.”

15. Generally, how do you rate the working conditions in Canada?

“I think it’s a lot fairer than it was at one time. I think it’s still hard for companies, in my experience, to get people involved and really challenge people to do their best. We know that two-thirds of people who leave companies do so because of the managers or supervisors they work for.

“So, I think we’ve got a lot of improvements that we need to make in how people are managed in terms of challenging people. I think (managers) probably often don’t have a good enough understanding of the needs and the turn-ons and the creativity that people have. They may be more focused on the task they are trying to achieve. I think they need knowledge of the diverse things that people need and encouragement of people is probably missing in a lot of cases. I don’t think we learn enough about the drivers of human needs in schools and in our education.”

16. What’s your vision for Design Group?

“We want to be dominant in our business and be the company of choice. We have a mission of doubling our business by 2004 to $200 million (revenue). It was $114 million last year. We now rank in our industry in the top two in Canada.”

17. What’s the best advice you’d offer a young entrepreneur?

“Follow your dreams. Follow your ambitions. Don’t be frightened to fail. I’ve certainly done better than I could ever have envisioned, so that’s probably a good reason to follow your dreams. You don’t know what you really can do until you try.”

18. How important is money to you?

“I think it was more important in the early days. Of course, profit is important in our business, but making money isn’t particularly (necessary) for me right now. I don’t think I’m an extravagant person. I have a fairly modest house. I live on 40 acres. I drive a nice car.”

19. How long do you see yourself remaining president of Design Group?

“We’ve just started to develop a succession plan in our organization that would see me gone by 2005. I’m not sure of my future in that regard. I’m usually busy, so I’m sure I could find things to do (in retirement). But that’s a question that I think I could only answer after a sabbatical.”

20. When are you taking a sabbatical?

(Laughter) “I haven’t got one planned. It’s hard to decide those things in the day-to-day activity of business. Yeah, I’m pretty busy. My wife, uh . . . I guess that’s one of the negatives, that I’m not around as much as I ought to be. I spend a full day (at work). I usually don’t get out of here until 6 or 7 o’clock.”

IN PROFILE: Mike Duff

* Born/raised/age: Sydney, Australia; 56.

* Titles: President/CEO, Design Group Staffing Inc.; president, Devonian Hyundai and Subaru City auto dealership.

* Education: St. George Technical College (Australia), electrical engineering certificate; Harvard Business School, owner/president management program (1998).

* Family: Wife Shirley, daughter Jaclyn, 15, sons Robert, 16, David, 18.

* Career: Prior to founding Design Group in 1976, Duff worked as a design specialist for Canadian Bechtel, Catalytic Enterprises and Great Canadian Oil Sands and as an electrical draftsman with Stelco, Ontario Hydro and Civic & Civic (Sydney).

* Awards: In 1995, Duff was a Prairie Region finalist for the Entrepreneur of the Year Award and has been a recipient of the Fraser Milner Pinnacle Award for entrepreneurial achievement.

THE COMPANY: Design Group Staffing

* Brass: Mike Duff, owner/president/CEO; Damon Ng, chief financial officer; David Shea, Edmonton general manager; Larry Staley, Calgary general manager.

* Profile: Design Group supplies clients with immediate access to temporary and contract staff in Canada through four divisions – technology, industrial, office/clerical and information technology. The privately owned company has offices in Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, Vancouver, Oakville, Ont., and London, Ont.

* Mission: The Design Group's purpose for being in business is to serve customers' needs – taking pride in outperforming competitors – and to build long-term business relationships based on trust and respect for people.

* Accolades: Design Group has made the annual list of Canada's 50 Best Managed Private Companies for the past three years.

* Website: www.dgstaff.com

* Edmonton office: 2380-10155 102nd St., T5J 4G8 (780-428-1505).

* Calgary office: 401-1110 Centre St. N., T2E 2R2 (403-233-2788).

* Red Deer office: 3rd Floor, 4915 54th St., T4N 2G7 (403-309-0757).