Inside The Edge
About
The Executive Chair
The one question you always want to ask a successful person in a senior leadership role is “How did you get there?” In developing your own career, you learn more from hearing what worked – and didn’t work – from senior leaders and hearing their wisdom than from any other source.
We are embarking on a series of interviews with leaders who exemplify success for us. In their words are insights that can give you direction for moving your own career forward.
To read a summary, written by Michael DeVenney, of the past 12 interviews this year - click here.
| Jim Spatz & Gordon Laing - Two Leaders, One Vision |
Bluteau DeVenney and Company (BDCO): What did you do to move to a leadership role?Jim Spatz (JS): My experiences, both in my previous career and from being the son of the founder of this business, have shaped my values and my career path. I started out my working career as a physician. I was a General Practitioner for about 5 years, and then moved on to become an Emergency Physician in Montreal for about ten years. During that time I become the Acting Chief for that emergency room, which was in a teaching hospital. That role provided me with great experience in both leading and educating a large group of people. The business I am in now is a family business that was passed down to me from my father. A lot of what I have learned in this career came from my father sharing with me how he looked at business, both in terms of building and acquiring real estate, and relationship building. I have worked very hard to grow this company and expand our business beyond my father's original apartment building business. Gordan Laing (GL): My path to leadership has been very traditional. I am a believer that your ability to lead is not dependant on whether or not you have the leadership gene. I think you have it, but the question is whether or not it gets developed. Going back to the beginning of my career when I was in an entry level position, I always made a point of getting involved, whether it was committees or volunteer groups. These roles allowed me to develop leadership skills at an early point it my career. I also learned a lot from watching leaders that I worked with over the years. Some taught me great leadership approaches that I have borrowed in developing my own leadership style, but more importantly, others taught me what not to do in a leadership role. I worked for a few different companies before coming to Southwest Properties but I didn't have a background in real estate, which I think for me was a good thing. I have been learning more and more about it as we go along but there are already a lot of people in this company that have great knowledge of the real estate business, so what I bring to the table is my experience in management and leadership. (BDCO): What is one thing that developing professionals need to do more of?(GL): They need to ask more questions. It takes a level of confidence to be able to sit in a room and admit to what you don't know. There always seems to be that pressure to have all the answers. I have always encouraged people to ask a lot of questions. It is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. (JS): I would agree that asking questions is crucial. Communication is the key to successful organizations. If something isn't going well, talk about it before it is too late. That being said, I think young professionals need to learn that it is ok to fail sometimes. There is so much to learn from making mistakes. Of course, you want to pick up on the failure as quick as you can and get things back on the right track, but that's where communication comes in. Organizations that permit feedback and communication early on when things are starting to go a little off course will always have better outcomes. (BDCO): What about doing less of?(GL): There's an expectation now in terms of career progression, where people are going to go and how fast they are going to get there. I think they need to slow down, adjust their expectations, and realize that there is a lot to learn in any organization. They need to have some patience to become very good at what they do and let things progress naturally. (JS): I agree. Of course, with the exodus of the baby boomers from the workforce, this may be an opportunity for those people who want to move up quickly to do so. However, this could be a disadvantage for those who are not anxious to step up so quickly, they may not have the luxury of slowing down. (BDCO): What experience helped you the most in your career and why?(JS): Shortly after joining this company I got us involved in a different kind of real estate (Sunny Side Mall) at a time when the economy was nearing a recession and investment in real estate was slowing. It was a very challenging yet rewarding experience. It taught me a lot about our business, and the importance of considering the bigger picture in terms of the world beyond your business. (GL): I think it is something that happens every day. You experience something, you learn from it, you are influenced by it, and that shapes how you react to certain situations going forward. I can't narrow it down to one specific experience, but there are a few highlights. The first would be my experience with a high tech company where I was introduced to a lot of Japanese manufacturing techniques and cultures, and was fortunate to get a lot of great training. That helped shape my mindset that anything is possible, and not to get stuck on the status quo. I learned to always ask why. The other great experience I had would be going to a subsequent job that was essentially bankrupt, which I knew when I started. That experience taught me how to focus on what was important in the present, while at the same time developing a vision for making the company successful in the future and ensuring we never had to go through that again. It was a great lesson in combining short term goals with a long term vision. Finally, coming into this position with Southwest Properties without any formal real estate experience was a revitalization. The excitement of learning something new again, at a point in my career when a lot of people would be very settled in their work routine, it reinforced the importance of learning new things and getting out of your comfort zone. (BDCO): What was the greatest challenge moving your career forward?(JS): For me it was surviving the Sunny Side Mall deal, which I mentioned previously. As an individual I was new to the business, and as a company we were new to retail real estate. Those factors coupled with the recession made it a big challenge for me. In the end it was a invaluable learning experience and it turned out to be a great success story for us. (GL): I have been very fortunate. Early on my career may not have progressed at the speed I would have liked, so the challenge would have been to leave the first organization, in which I was very comfortable. Other than that, I wouldn't say there have been any great challenges I have had to overcome. (BDCO): What is the greatest strength of your approach to leadership?(JS): I stay very calm. I can obsess a little bit about something that is not going as smoothly as I would like it to go, but I usually end up putting it in perspective and realizing that most things that happen are not game changers. (GL): I am very patient. I think this has allowed me to develop a relationship with the rest of the organization in which they feel comfortable talking to me about things that may not be going well. They know that the discussion will be focused on how to fix the problem, rather than focusing on why it happened in the first place. (BDCO): What is the greatest benefit to you in attaining a senior leadership role?(GL): The involvement at all levels of an organization. The things you get to see and the experiences you get in a leadership role are certainly greater than in other roles. It results in a very rewarding career. (JS): Working with a very smart, interesting group of people has been a great highlight for me. (BDCO): What is the next achievement you want in your leadership career?(GL): We have a long term vision for where we want to take the company, so working towards that vision is very important to me. In ten years from now, if I can look back and say we did what we set out to do and that I was played a part in it, that would very exciting. (JS): Sustainability is a big word today. Family businesses are trying to grow to a point in which they don't necessarily need to be run by a family member. I have two sons who may or may not want work in this business. I am a strong believer that doing what you love and are passionate about is more important than running the family business. I would like to ensure that as a business we are sustainable enough to survive regardless of what my sons choose to do. We are almost there. I think we are very close to being big enough and interesting enough to attract good managers and leaders to allow us to be self-sustaining. (BDCO): What is the biggest challenge you face in achieving results in your work?(JS): I like to see things resolved quickly. Often times I wish our business could be run like an emergency room and that things were dealt with and solved within the hour. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. One project can sometimes take three or four years from start to finish, so the timelines are very different than I was used to in my past career. I am sometimes guilty of thinking everything is a priority, when in reality, we can only do so many projects at once. That is always a challenge. (GL): I would say much the same. Our biggest challenge is actually positive in that there are an enormous number of opportunities out there for us, so the challenge really is figuring out which ones would be best for us to pursue. We always end up biting off a little more than we can chew, which I think is a good thing because it keeps us focused. As a result, once we decide which opportunities to take, the challenge then becomes how to deploy our resources to get our greatest return. (BDCO): What is your greatest opportunity/goal for providing value for your organization?(JS): I place a lot of emphasis on excellence, both from my staff and myself. I think my greatest opportunity is attracting the right people to our company. When you have the right people working alongside of you, everyone tries their very best to achieve excellence. (GL): My greatest opportunity is seeing our ideas through from start to finish. Jim is the visionary behind most of our ventures. My job is to then rally everyone together to determine how and when it is going to happen, and to then lead everyone to ensure that we stay on track and accomplish what we set out to do. (BDCO): What added support or capability would help you most in delivering on your goals?(GL): We reevaluate often to determine what we need from a resource perspective at that time and for the next couple of years to come. For the most part, it comes down to having the right people. For instance, when we are in a major constructions phase we looking for people with a lot of experience in project management. Today, we are looking for people with strong financial backgrounds. (JS): Of course, there are always those resources that entrepreneurs never have enough of. In order to grow a business you need people, and you need money. You can have a lot of great ideas, but in reality you need people and money to make things happen.
Think about where you are now in your career and what you can take from Jim and Gordon's observations. We would love to hear your comments about what are your key takeaways from our conversation with them. Tell us your progress – we want you to succeed. ______________________________________________________________
Founded in 1950, Southwest Properties has grown to over 100 employees and currently owns and operates more than 1,250 quality apartments and condos within Halifax. Southwest's landmark projects include Sunnyside Mall in Bedford, Nova Scotia, which twice received the International Council of Shopping Centres’ Maple Leaf Award as the best shopping centre redevelopment in Canada in its size category; Bishop’s Landing in Halifax, which gained international recognition as the winner of the Waterfront Centre of Washington, DC’s 2002 Excellence on the Waterfront Award for “Best Mixed Use Project”; and, Atlantic Place in St. John’s, the largest office building in Newfoundland. You can find out more about Southwest Properties at www.southwest.ca. |
