Peter Conlon: President and CEO of Natuel Limited

Bluteau DeVenney and Company (BDCO): What did you do to move to a leadership role?

Peter Conlon (PC) In many ways, where I am in my career has been the result of a series of decisions that were made based on what was in front of me at the time, as opposed to thinking about a specific plan of getting to a leadership role. A number of years ago I sat and thought about what had gone on in my career up until that point in time, and I was a little worried about it. I had done so many different things, I couldn't say what I was. I could look at other successful colleagues and say they were a marketing expert or a finance expert. I, on the other hand, had worked in customer service, operations, product management, technology, marketing, and sales. I felt that I didn't really have any area of expertise. This worried me until I moved into slightly more senior roles. It was then I realized that actually having experienced all of those roles first-hand was very valuable. I am not any one thing. I am someone who has done almost everything, from being a salesman to the Chief Financial Officer of a publicly traded corporation. I think all of these different experiences helped me transition more easily into a leadership role and feel like a more complete leader.

(BDCO): What is one thing that developing professionals need to do more of?

(PC): They need to get out of their comfort zone. Businesses today, regardless of size, have to operate like startup companies. They have to constantly reinvent themselves. The global market is changing so quickly that, if you think what you were doing yesterday is good enough for tomorrow, you could be making a very big mistake. We see some organizations that had some great models, but who are not around anymore because they weren't quite adaptable enough. If you want to be the leader of a successful organization, you have to be flexible and responsive. To do this, you need to learn to work outside your comfort zone in order to properly communicate and learn from people in other disciplines.

(BDCO): What about doing less of?

(PC): You should not be afraid of having people work with you, and for you, who are much better at what they do than you would ever be. For a lot of people this is very hard. Often people are more intimidated by the idea of hiring someone smarter than they are because they are worried about whether that person will outshine them. What they really should be focusing on is what a great asset that person could be to their company – and to their own careers!

(BDCO): What experience helped you the most in your career and why?

Failing miserably, which is both humbling and educational. I remember the first time I was ever given the opportunity to run a company. I thought I was pretty great, and I wasn't. I was woefully unprepared to run a company. Actually my boss' boss came down and showed me just how unprepared I was. To this day, I get embarrassed when I think about how foolish I looked in front of him. Part of my weakness was in the mechanics of running a company, such as fully understanding financial statements. I ended up going back to school to get my MBA because I vowed that I would never let myself look that incompetent in front of somebody again. Now, years later, this man who I embarrassed myself in front of is a great friend and mentor. He saw that I was willing to pick myself up and take the necessary steps to evolve as a leader. I think he respected that, and as a result he has continued to be a guiding light for me in my career.

(BDCO): What was the greatest challenge moving your career forward?

(PC): I am terrible at marketing myself. I have no problem marketing a company or a product, but the moment I have to apply those marketing abilities to me, I become lost for words. Many of us in business have the old fashioned idea that, if you are really good at what you do, people will know it without you having to tell them. Earlier in my career I would watch people who were obsessively self-promoting and I remember thinking it was tacky. Looking back now, I think that somewhere between blatantly self-promoting and being a wallflower is a smart place to be. I would say my challenge is that I have always tended to be more like a wallflower.

(BDCO): What is the greatest strength of your approach to leadership?

(PC): There are different types of leaders. There are the leaders who are very precise and trustworthy. Everyone knows that they have thought everything through very thoroughly, and when they finally come to a decision, people have a high degree of confidence in that decision. The other type of leader is the inspirational leader who leads through passion. That is more so the category I fall in. I think the people that have worked with me tend to see, not only the passion, but a reasonably thought out vision, and they believe that when I see a challenge I always see an opportunity and they want to be part of that opportunity.

(BDCO): What has been the biggest surprise you have had since attaining a senior leadership role?

(PC): How hard it is to get things done. Organizations, which are made up of people, have incredible inertia. I don't think I really understood that people move at their own pace. When you are a junior person in an organization you think that when you are the boss you can just snap your fingers and make anything happen. But when you finally get to be the boss you find out that you can snap your fingers all day, but nothing is going to happen because it has to happen through other people, and they have their own pace and their own fears. You find yourself in a situation where you have to herd all of these cats in one direction, and it can be painfully slow at times.

(BDCO)What is the greatest benefit to you in attaining a senior leadership role?

(PC): When people talk about employees working well together, it is often referred to as "playing well in the sandbox". I don’t think I play well in someone else’s sandbox. One of the things that has been most rewarding about becoming a senior leader is that it has become “my” sandbox. Whether that is good, bad, or indifferent, it is the place that best suits me. I realized pretty early in my career that I needed to be my own boss because it would allow me to do what I wanted, which is to be active in every part of the business.

(BDCO): What is the next achievement you want in your leadership career?

(PC):I have never really been an entrepreneur. I am not even sure that I could be a very good entrepreneur. I know I can be successful if given the raw material, but I think a true entrepreneur creates raw material. That is why I am not sure that I would make it as an entrepreneur, but because I have never done it I would really like to give it a try.

(BDCO): What is the biggest challenge you face in achieving results in your work?

(PC): In the market we are in today, there is no solid ground. You can't stand still. You have to move, but you have no idea if you are making the right move. When you are in a leadership role, people expect you to know what that right move is, and that is really difficult right now. You have the Canadian dollar going up and down, global markets in chaos, and natural disasters happening, which not only devastates people in a human sense, but also has repercussions in the supply chain sense as well. It becomes very difficult to try and chart a path through all of this obscurity, significantly more difficult than it used to be.

(BDCO): What is your greatest opportunity/goal for providing value for your organization?

(PC): If I can continue to have the people I work with believe in me and believe that I am leading them in the right direction, they can go out on their own and do some amazing things. A really good leader gives away leadership. Your job is almost to render yourself unnecessary because you take people at all levels and fill them with the confidence to explore and succeed on their own. As a good leader, which I hope I am, that is one of my biggest tasks - to give leadership away.

(BDCO): What added support or capability would help you most in delivering on your goals?

(PC): I wish I knew how to use the people and resources that I have at my disposal to gain as much clarity as possible about what is going on out there today and how it might shift in the future. Through some combination of 30 years in business and a MBA, I believe I have learned how to respond to many kinds of shifts. The challenge that we face in 2011 is that we don't know what those shifts will be, when they’ll happen or how many of them are coming. Just as you are putting in place the things you need to do to respond one change, another change happens. You almost need to build your response before you know the problem. Of course, the hard part is that you have no idea what is going to confront you tomorrow. The best I can do is to try to use the resources around me to the best of my ability and be as proactive as possible.

Think about where you are now in your career and what you can take from Peter's observations. We would love to hear your comments about what are your key takeaways from our conversation with Peter.

Tell us your progress – we want you to succeed.

______________________________________________________________

Nautel Limited is a global leader in the manufacture of medium wave AM and FM radio broadcast transmitters, navigational radio beacons, Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) transmitters, medium frequency (MF) telegraph and NAVTEX transmitters, and high frequency (HF) amplifiers for dielectric heating applications.

You can find out more about Nautel Limited at www.nautel.com.

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