Discovery Series – Lessons in Leadership
Date: August 17, 2016
Name: Discovery Series – Lessons in Leadership
Presenters: Lori Mathison, Kari Lockhart, and Sujeet Kini
Successful leaders differentiate themselves in the workplace; moreover, accomplished industry leaders create meaningful connections and insights in their career paths. Board of Trade invites Lori Mathison, the Managing Partner of Dentons Canada LLP, Kari Lockhart, Partner of Deloitte, and Sujeet Kini, the Chief Financial Officer at Hootsuite Media Inc, to share their key success factors in their career. In addition, all presenters have Certified Professional Accountant designation, and they will discuss how they benefit the internationally recognized designation to accelerate their careers. This presentation will benefit all young leaders who are pursing accounting designation.
Lessons from Lori Mathison
Lori Mathison started her career from a law firm called Fraser & Beatty. The firm later became Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP. In 2012, the firm was combined by Dentons. Mathison emphasizes her career was not easy, but she believed in order to be successful, leaders need to be different.
The approach of CPA designation was a huge asset for her because not all lawyers have CPA designation. This was different and it made standout from other lawyers. During her career journey, she discovered her passion in tax. She refocused her direction and move to tax concentrate path. CPA designation helped her explore more clients and accelerate her creditability in her career. Mathison was thankful for CPA because it made her business relationship stronger than ever.
Mathison believes leaders need to build on relationship. They need to be committed and be involved. Mathison recommends young leaders to get on the board or committees in an organization they love. They can start with a small committee and move on the director in the future. Being on the board helps Mathison improve her strategic thinking.
Mathison lists 4 major key to success.
- Find and optimize leader’s differentiator
- Tackle leader’s weakness
- Value all relationships
- Earn it
Leaders need to develop skills and use it as a business generator. Leaders in this generation require passion that turns innovate new ideas into niche industry. The key question is “What makes leader special?”
Mathison admits she is afraid of public speaking. She mitigates the weakness by teaching baby class about tax. Leaders must value all relationships because all interactions are like opportunities. Leaders must always have the mindset of “no one will hand them success”. They must go out there and earn it.
Leaders should have work-life balance and have the ability to take a long term view. They should learn how to make choices and say “no”. They should embrace team approach because feedback is helpful and it can discover better result.
“All of us is smarter than one of us”
“When you say no to something, you are actually saying yes to something else”
Lessons from Kari Lockhart
Kari Lockhart started her career at Ernst & Young. She received her CA designation and pursued her career in London Ernst & Young. In London, she got approached by someone who worked in Enron. However, she turned down the offer and went to a middle energy company called “Dynegy”.
Many people have the conception that Enron blew up overnight. Lockhart disagreed. When Enron hit 1.2 billion on their equity, Lockhart thought nothing would happen. Dynegy had the opportunity to buy Enron. When more bad pressed appeared on Enron, it affected Dynegy. Eventually a 2 billion lawsuit hit Dynegy.
Dynegy was in crisis. Lockhart explains without her designation, she could not make it. Three years later, Dynegy got liquidized. The Chief Executive Officer resigned and the responsibility got transferred to Lockhart. She needed to work with the president to shut the company down. She sold all the assets, turned off the light and moved back to Vancouver.
Afterwards, she managed to work at BC Hydro. Lockhart quitted after 2 months because she could not handle from going crazy environment to government. She went work with a startup that involved with online poker, but the company got brought out in 6 months.
Lockhart realized Vancouver is a different market. It was all about relationship. She headed back to Ernst & Young and worked in the technology sector. Her success in technology sector got attention by Deloitte. While in Deloitte, she loved technology, but the organization kept pulling her into Mining sector. By sticking with passion, she managed to help Deloitte to grow up the practice by focusing on helping small business companies on finance.
Lockhart lists 3 major key to success
- Follow the heart and the passion
- Do not over think too much
- It will work out in the future if leaders stuck with it
“Follow your gut, success will come”
Lessons from Sujeet Kini
Sujeet Kini works in Hootsuite Media Inc, the world’s most widely used social relationship platform. It raised over 250 million to drive hyper growth with over 2500 enterprise customers. Hootsuite has over 14 million users, 200 and more integration with 175 countries. The organization has over 800 employees and adapted 800 of the fortune 500 companies.
Kini explains the speed of change has increased in all industry. It takes telephone 75 years to reach 50 million users; in addition, it takes 38 years for radio and 13 years for television. However, it takes 4 years for internet, 3.5 years for Facebook and 3 years for iPhone. This shows social media is here to stay.
Kini started his career in PricewaterhouseCoopers as senior associate. He moved to GT Group telecom as Senior manager and later to Direct Energy as Controller. Afterwards, he transferred to Open Text as Chief Financial Officer and now the Chief Financial Officer in Hootsuite.
Kini shares the evolution of accounting. Originally, people refer to accountants as the bookkeepers. When companies are evolving, people starts refer them as bean counters. As they starting to drive or influence the decision making, accountants refer to themselves as “the smartest guys in the room”. Accountants starts to aim form creative accounting, which make them as “the custodian and allocators of capital”, which means they are having equilibrium in the organization.
Leaders who are in accounting field must always remember what the letters after their name means. Kini emphasizes leaders’ reputation is their badge of honor. These letters made them become the trusted expert.
Skills trump title. Leaders must distinguish between the authority of ideas and the idea of authority. Leaders focus on skills they learn because it can change their career perspective. Title can only get to certain point, and leaders need to sell in order to sustain their success.
Work-life balance can be difficult for accountants. The key for leaders is to find the right way to get ready to manage their lives.
During interview, Kini looks for integrity. He believes hiring for integrity is important because skills can be trained later.
Question and Answers
There are many kinds of leadership style. Mathison believes in collaboration. Lockhart wants to be pioneer and wants to try new things. Kini looks for empowerment. Aside from work, Lockhart spends time with the Board of BC Technology to stay connect with the industry. Kini has the passion about reading and writing because writing can articulate complex subject to non-accountants. Mathison spends time to give back to community.
Kini gives young leaders the advice of wherever they are, they need to think like an owner. They need to understand what other people are thinking. Lockhart gives the advice of glass is always half full and embrace the bad. Mathison gives the advice of career is a marathon, not a race.