Accelerating Business Podcast - Season 1 Episode 8
Louis: Given your long private sector work history how does someone of your pedigree end up being Dean of Engineering at a technical college? What brought you here?
David: Yeah, that's a little bit odd. I had the opportunity of working with the college system most of my career, in some shape or form, helping organizations develop the talent that they need. When I was in maintenance and operations and then in training and development. I've had a long-standing relationship, not only with Mohawk College, but other institutions across the country as I travelled and even in Europe and the US. So those institutions allow you the opportunity to actually help you solve your problems, skill build your employees, maintain the competence that you need to actually run your processes. I was also fortunate to work for organizations that valued that and that was very, very important. If I look back, I hear in Hamilton companies like Dofasco that have been around 106 years and have maintained profitability and are actually helping the larger group around the world. It's a core competence they have in terms of the ability to skill build. But they didn't do it alone. They did it with partners in education and even when I went out West, it was the same thing out there. Companies like Suncor that have maintained a strong position because they have competence in their employees. Colleges serve that role very, very well and their roles expanded more the last few years, in that they've gotten into other areas and things that you wouldn't think about them doing like, research and development. They play a different role in that. They like to solve problems, short term problems not long term, research activities like maybe a university would do, that brings a different level of skill set. Colleges are now helping. They go into the field; they work with companies and so that appealed to me. I happen to be in a position in my career where I was looking for a soft landing. They wanted to build this Joyce Centre which is Canada's largest net zero building, geo-thermal and solar and they asked to me take a look at it and see what I could put inside of it. From that came the opportunity to put in some of the emerging technologies and these labs are helping us deal with advance manufacturing, and there again, in this community and even across Ontario and hopefully in the aerospace business, really make Canada competitive and we're going to play a big role in that.
Louis: I'm curious as to how your long history in industry has helped you be the leader of an academic faculty at a college. What skills and experience have you had to translate or use in this current role?
David: I might be a bit of an anomaly. I don't know that I'm the traditional Dean, but I think I bring a different perspective into how I would look at things. I bring that industry business experience to the table, as I said earlier, I've actually used and been part of the college system that I've integrated, I'm bringing companies to the table and building partnerships and demonstrating. Since I've been here probably 75 different organizations have come in here to help them understand how they can actually use a college as a place in which they can actually train and skill build. I'm in the process now of several, rather than building your own, and a lot of companies did this, they built their own training centres on site. It takes a lot of work and effort to do that and having people that can actually train when you have something like this in your backyard. If you look around the advanced manufacturing labs that we have in here, and the equipment you see behind me, you can't just pick that up and just buy it and hold it down. There are different challenges nowadays for organizations to maintain competitiveness, especially with things like AI and digital and many other areas that they're getting into right now, out of manufacturing. These are areas where they can come and learn about it and actually put it into practice. Then if they decide that they want buy some of that equipment then they're at least competent in being able to use it. I think I bring that industry experience and bring it to the table with a difference set of lenses that maybe a traditional Dean that's grown up in the academic area. It's not either or, it's both. Just the fact that I've been around for an awful long time and saw the ups and downs of organization and improving performance, I think I kind of bring a different set of views to the table.
Louis: You've touched on it but maybe with reference to a particular type of client in a particular industry sector, how does the College partner with that institution? In what ways? How do they work together collaboratively?
David: There's a couple ways. First of all we gotta create some awareness of what we do as an organization. We often ask them to come to the College and just take a look at, not only the equipment and the building, but meet some of the faculty, meet some of the students that can be of great value to them. We like to encourage companies to, nowadays talent is so difficult and if you're not involved in co-op or engaging students in some kind of internships, your pipeline might be scarce going forward. It's very, very competitive, especially in Ontario right now. Manufacturing is doing well, and health care is doing well. That's an opportunity to actually engage them in create some awareness. This is what we do. Then we try to demonstrate value. We show them what we can do. We talk about past experiences with other organizations and then once they see that we say, "Maybe we can frame up an opportunity to engage with you." Maybe test drive or try an opportunity or solve a problem. We work with a small manufacturer here in Hamilton that had never engaged with a college or university. They're on a global basis relatively small but their parent company is rather large. Their margins are one cent for everything that they produce. One cent is an awful lot, but they need to get another half a cent. So, we took some students and faculty down there. We went to take a look at them. Help them with some technology. Demonstrated to them that we can make some improvements. They showed head office in Europe and before you know it, we had 3 or 4 other projects and they got global recognition from their head office. Those are the kinds of things; the bigger organizations kind of already get it. Then we build a hypothesis around that company. We don't want just a one-time transactional relationship. We want a long-term relationship. We want to know that down the road you can come in here and use this institution for many purposes.
Louis: Now, you're part of, as you've alluded to, the education and ecosystem and another other huge institution in this region is McMaster University. How would you differentiate Mohawk's positioning and role and functioning from McMaster in its vertical with respect, especially to interactions with private industry?
David: Great question. If I back up a little bit, it's not a new relationship. We've been working with McMaster for well over 20 years. We've learned how to complement each other in terms of what we do. We actually have pathways into different programs at the university level so you get a diploma up to 2 or 3 years here at Mohawk College and then you can go on and do your degree program. Our Bachelor of Technology programs are a prime example where we were one of the first college/universities to do that. Very successful program that almost 600 engineering students graduate every year out of McMaster University that have pathway from Mohawk or other colleges into that program. It's recognized as being a top program. High level of practical experience is kind of the differentiator. You come here, you see the multitude of labs that we have in here and we drive that opportunity to get a hands-on experience in here. With McMaster they add a different realm of theory and complexity that you wouldn't get at a college level. But the two are converging as much as, even the faculties are converging, so you see business and engineering working together to compliment what they do in the workplace. There's so many fronts in which we can work together on. Even in the areas of applied research. There's things that McMaster will be doing that might be 5 years very, very complex but there's a short term deliverable that they have so they'll say to Mohawk, "Can you work on this piece of it." and we're servicing the same customer. We're grateful that we've got that kind of relationship. Often, we hear others saying, "How do you do that? How do you make that work?" We even share faculty and we definitely share labs and facilities which is just nice that we can be able to do that. I think about aerospace being a prime example of where we know that neither of us can do it alone. We have to work together. It's so complex so it just works really well.
Louis: We'll turn to aerospace in a moment but with respect to the faculty of engineering itself, why don't you talk from a higher level about the size of the faculty, the breadth that it's of course offering and its interactions and connections to private industry.
David: Realizing that much of our faculty comes from industry, they've work in the industry and they've decided to jump over and go the academic route. So, we have in the engineering area about 150 faculty that have worked in here part-time and full-time. Some might have a full-time job, but they teach a particular course because of their expertise. That's the other unique part of it, is they stay relevant because they're still working in the industry in some capacity, but they get to teach and maybe someday they come over full-time. We've got the ability to have the options of working with different experts as we need them.
Louis: I would imagine that having current industry experts be part of the faculty is a draw for students who are looking for relevant industry experience.
David: For sure, because they bring that back into the industry. The other thing we have in here is program advisory committees. We have industry experts sitting on every single faculty that we have with the College who advise us and make sure that we're staying in the lead on our content and our curriculum, that's a requirement from the ministry to do that, but they also bring insights and they bring opportunities for students and they bring partners to the table. That's a big part of being involved, that if you're not even part of the faculty you can actually be part of the College in a different way. There's a few hundred of them that support our advisory committees.
Louis: How many students with the engineering faculty graduate in a year, David?
David: I'm going to say just over a thousand students a year. I don't have the exact number off the top of my head. It varies every year. A significant percentage, about 10%, is international students. That's another big piece that we bring to the table is that we have a good rapport with the international community and gives us a perspective. A lot of our partners are global companies so it's nice to know that we can service by having international students that may go back in work in a … middle facility in India or some other part of the world.
Louis: I take it that the College then would probably stay in touch with its alumni who are now working both nationally and globally.
David: Big time. Alumni is very, very important to most of the educational institutions and even to the colleges now from fund raising to sourcing new faculty or hiring students or full-time opportunities. People are moving around all the time. We always reach out to the faculty to find out, if a partner comes and says they want somebody with 10 years' experience, well then, we have to go to our alumni to get that.
Louis: I take it that on occasion alumni may be coming back for additional supplemental education from time to time?
David: That's a growing area. Both the colleges and universities have realized that micro-credentialing is going to be huge. It's not like you take a night school course because they have a program in your company to pay for an extra continuing education course. We're going to have to deliver micro-certification all the time, 24 hours of the day kind of thing, and probably a lot of it online. But many of the labs in here are designed for that so in the evening, in our part-time enrollments about 16,000. It's the same as the full-time enrollment. This place is as busy after hours, after 4:00, as it is through the day. But that's going to be a requirement. It's moving so fast that you may have graduated 5 years ago when now all of a sudden you need to know a little bit more about data analytics or cyber security or some other area in which industries moving into it, how are you going to get that. I think for the colleges and the universities we may have to deliver that on site as well. We have to change our modality for delivering training and curriculum and knowledge. It could be short courses or seminars or certified programs.
Louis: I take it that the micro-certification, or those opportunities to obtain new skills or brush up on old ones, are they offered to other industry or industry sectors for the purposes of familiarizing yourself with an area you may not be working full-time? Or are they limited to those that have graduated from an engineering program?
David: I'm going to say both in that area. We also are working with companies like IBM. We have a huge partnership with IBM. They have an academy of a series of micro-credentialing courses that they offer and we offer out to our customers and our clients that are available to them because they can be online or they can be delivered here at Mohawk College. That's another growing area, particularly for people that travel or are far away, they think, "Well, geez, maybe tonight I'll do a module." and they can be in their hotel room and dial in and complete a module on a particular area.
Louis: David, let's talk a little bit about this beautiful facility, the Joyce Centre. Tell me about where we are, what it does and how it came to be.
David: So, we had an opportunity to do something different at Mohawk College, in terms of expanding into a new facility. We realized that having the Centre for Climate Change here in the Burlington/Hamilton area, that we wanted to be a part of that. We also recognize that climate change was important. Sustainability was a big growing area and many of our business partners and industry partners were interested in that area. We thought we could build just a normal building like everybody else or we could do something different. Most colleges and universities have parody with each other in terms of how they offer programs. We wanted something different. That journey isn't over yet, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. But this building gave us an opportunity to look at some of the new technologies that are in the area of low carbon, like solar. We thought, "Geez, could we actually do that?" and when we looked into it we found the partner like Canadian Solar that said, "Yeah, we can put on the largest solar ray panels on top of the roof." Then we said, "What about geo-thermal?" and what a great location with the makeup of the geography. Here being on the outskirt and the water and the rock, it was the perfect situation for geo-thermal. The journey began from there. That was a piece of it, the bricks and mortar, get that built. This is the largest, 100,000 square foot, geo-thermal solar building in Canada, for the most part off the grid. It's been very, very successful. Very few little problems in it. Very little maintenance and very little cost to run it. The other part of it is, what goes inside of this building that aligns with the fact that it's a sustainable building. The things that we have in here, we have some sustainable labs, we looked at energy, we looked at digital, we looked at having an IIOT room because we're going to have to measure all the information that this building provides us. The journey isn't just about building the building, it's about how do we inform the rest of the Province, Canada, maybe the world, on how you can actually do this and rehabilitate other buildings by the research that we do on this building and the technologies that we have learned about that can be applied to other buildings. As we redesign our campus plan, we have old facilities, we're not going to tear down the old buildings, we're going to rehabilitate them. We're going to use the technologies that we have in here as much as possible to add to those. That's the biggest opportunity, around the world, is to be able to add these technologies and add a little bit of solar or geo-thermal or energy management systems to a building to be able to save on energy. The materials you use and the windows and the flooring and all those other things that go into that. Even the design ventilation systems are hugely important making a big difference to the building. The other part of that is when you go to Mohawk College and you graduate you will know that a Mohawk College student went here. Because they learned about sustainability. They learned about social responsibility. They learned about energy systems. They learn about all of those things that go together to make sure that you're making a difference out there. It'll be different for different faculties. Some will be just awareness, some will be knowledge, some will be skill building and some will be competence in those areas. It's like Stanford University, if you went down to Stanford University and you bumped into a Stanford student, you know they went to Stanford University. We hope to replicate that here at Mohawk over the next 20 years. You'll know a Mohawk College student. We'll get the reputation as being the college in Ontario where you learn about low carbon and sustainability and your contribution, because low carbon affects poverty and so many other things in a community, that we can actually make a different out there. The building's important. It gives us the mechanism to actually drive all these other behaviours and knowledge and training and technology. But we actually have to make sure that we move it out to others.
Louis: You talked about your focus, or at least I did in your biography, in aviation aerospace, and in that regard your collaboration with the City of Hamilton Economic Department and McMaster University. But as we know collaborating across institutions and industry sectors can be a challenge. Can you share with me some of your experiences and observations about the challenges of attempting to coordinate amongst all of those stakeholder institutions?
David: Yeah. It's been, in some cases, we're working hard and working as collaboratively as we can. But it's not easy. If you're an organization trying to stand up here in Hamilton, or probably in any community, there's a lot of pieces you have to pull together. There's not one single source you can go to get this to happen. I think if there's an opportunity for our community here in Hamilton, and other communities, even for the Province and even for Canada, is to do that better than anybody else. Being able to have kind of one stop shopping; that you come in here and be able to pull all those pieces together. Have the hub and the knows all lined up and that you can come in here and get some information. I'm helping an organization now to move from another jurisdiction across the country to locate in here, in Hamilton, because they're manufacturing, and they want to be able to stand up and ratchet up their operations. No better place than in Hamilton to do that. But it requires a lot of pieces. It requires the educational component to it. It requires the talent. It requires the experience of other companies that have actually done this to vertically start up a new institution. All the other pieces that go with that are not easy to find when you're a smaller organization. Even if you're a big organization. I've done this in other jurisdictions. I've gone to Mexico to stand up automotive plants. It's not easy in those places and it's not really easy here, yet, but hopefully that'll be a competence that we bring to the table because education can help bring that together, because of our relationships.
Louis: When you talk about the challenges from the perspective of the activity or density of an ecosystem, all those constituent parts working together to help advance as a region in a particular industry vertical, what are the advantages or assets you think that make the Hamilton area particularly compelling value proposition for manufacturing companies?
David: One thing is because I think we're well connected. Whether I'm working with Gowling or I'm working with the City of Hamilton, we all kind of know each other. You bring that to the table, and I can say to a small little startup company, "Why don't you go down and talk to ArcelorMittal Dofasco. I know somebody there that can help you with what you're doing." because they have small little satellite operations. Or I could find another small company that I can say, "Hey, do you mind spending a couple of hours in helping these guys learn a little bit about how you can operate and what are the challenges that you've had and share your experiences." I think that's good because we're intimate. There are other jurisdictions that I worked in and lived in where there isn't that intimacy. It's a one industry kind of area and it's a little more difficult to be able to pick up the phone and do that. I think that's unique about Hamilton is that we can do that in here and survey the colleges and universities and others have been able to build those relationships over a long time.
Louis: That's the asset … That's the asset side of the ledger. As you look at some of the specific challenges that you've experienced, can you talk a little bit about those and how you see us overcoming them in the region?
David: I think we have to be deliberate about how we're going to go about doing this. I think we have to sit down and look at our past experiences and saying we have a lot of companies that, as you would know, outside of Hamilton that want to come here. They want to come here because we have, what I would call collective competence, it's not just one piece but when we put it all together the collective competencies of our experiences, not just in manufacturing, but in innovation, in material science, all those other things when you add it up and you put it together, that really helps out. So when other companies come in here we have to be able to execute on that in a way that is in the pursuit of excellence. For these companies, they can't fail, they have one opportunity to come here and be successful. We put our minds to it. We have to take that collective confidence and share it around the organization. There are companies that are more than willing to put out their hand and help out and having nothing to gain by it. How do you get that in a community? That takes a lot of relationship building and understanding that for Hamilton it's important that we're all successful. The other thing, I've talked to other companies in here and the fact that Hamilton's growing so much the talent wars could start happening, but that could be a good thing. Because people will come were jobs are and the talent could actually improve. They're interested in participating and that's the good thing about this community.
Louis: Can we talk a little bit about that because the recruitment of, and the winning of the talent wars, keeping our best students in the region or attracting exceptional students who are graduates here to the region, to work and to live is a huge determinant of success in an economic ecosystem. Can you tell me what you experience has been in seeing Mohawk graduates in engineering stay in the region? Is this an area where we need to improve? What's been your thinking?
David: We're fairly fortunate, in fact, most do stay in this region. I'd actually like to see, and I hope that some of our students will take the opportunity to go outside of the region, just to get different experiences and that. There's a hesitation a little bit because it's job friendly. Canadians are that way. Stay at home. Work in your community. I think it's good. I have two daughters that are in engineering, both of them have global opportunities after they graduate, and I'm saying go for it. I'd like to see a little bit more effort. Having international students around helps because they're talking about their countries and where they're from. But the world's a big place and I think it's a good opportunity. They'll bring those competencies back into our community at some point in time. I think it's a good thing that we encourage young people to move around. But most of them actually do stay fairly close to our area, in the Greater Hamilton, Toronto, Niagara, Waterloo area. Most of them are here because there's plentiful sources of jobs around in here so it works out quite well.
Louis: In every industry vertical, including law, there is constant talk about innovation, disruption, maintaining and building innovation cultures, you've had long industry experience. You work collaboratively with private industry in an educational institution that is building the future, what advice can you give to companies of any size, especially the smaller ones that have to get their heads around how to innovate, and how to maintain an innovation culture.
David: It's nice to put that on paper, and many organizations have that as part of their either value statement or guiding principles or mission or whatever in their statements, that they want to build an innovative culture. That's going to be more challenging going forward. There's less time to practice and innovate and so you actually have to look at it very, very differently then you have in the past because time is of the essence. You've got to move very, very quickly. You've got to learn differently about those ideas and what others have done. I look at aerospace as an example. I went to a session where General Electric was giving a presentation on additive manufacturing. The VP of Engineering stood up and he said, "You know, at one time we shared nothing with any other engine manufacturer in the world, yet we're all working on the exact same piece. That doesn't need to happen anymore. There's things that we want to keep our IP on and there's other things where why are we all doing this at the same time and why don't we share?" There are a lot of organizations out there that are coming to realize that we can get there a lot faster. To be competitive you're going to have to move a lot faster. We can learn on something's together and differentiate on unique in our products and how we do things. It will be challenging in trying to build that skill set and that behaviour in an organization to be more innovative. A lot of organizations, it's people like myself, 60-year olds shouldn't be designing the future of work. It's 30-year-old that should be designing the future of work and how we work together. That's the challenge that a lot of leaders are having in organizations is how do you actually engage the younger workforce to say, "This is a different way in which we can innovate and share our ideas and move things forward." A lot more work to do on the softer side of how we design the future of work.
Louis: As you alluded to you're coming to the end of your career. As you look back, and look forward, is there anything that you'd still like to accomplish that is not yet done, in your mind?
David: I don't know. I always say this is my soft landing in here. I'm the poster child for how not to do it but I think I'm the poster child for maybe how to do it. That's where I've shifted. Is that I've done a lot of things not by plan. I just happen to fall into it. I think it's good for young people to experiment. This idea of job for life and one company and one location probably is not the best approach. Be willing to put your hand up. The ugliest part of an organization, when I was in the steel industry, probably the worst place you could work is the coke office. Most of the executives today came from working in the coke office. If I go to the energy sector
Louis: I'm sorry. Why do you think that is?
David:Because it's dirty and nobody wants to work there as much.
Louis: No. Why is it that those folks became executives?
David: Because they did their time in tougher areas of the organization. In the energy sector you have to go to oil sands. You're going to do your time in the oil sands and if you don't do your time in the oil sands your limiting your career. There's different experience up there. It's not about getting dirty. It's the problems are different up there then they are in a refinery that's been operating for 50 years. It's the same thing with the steel operation. You go in the areas, don't be afraid to put up your hand and say, "Yeah. I'll take a shot at that. I wouldn't mind doing that." They'll remember that and that's what they're looking for. That goes to your résumé at the end of the day. You did it and you can tick that box off. Or go to a location that may be not everybody wants to go to. It's nice to work in New York City or into London, England or into Paris, France or in downtown Toronto. But maybe Sarnia is the best place to go to gain the competencies or some other location.
Louis: In sharing that with me it's very insightful. I'm of a mind that having the capacity as an employer or a young person to take on those hard assignments necessarily requires that person be resilient. Be prepared to face failure. To start again. To learn from that and that employers encourage their employees to take those chances and those risks. Recognizing that they're going to fail but encouraging them to go on, nonetheless. Can you talk a little bit about that? About resilience from the employee's perspective and the tolerance for accepting failure on the part of employers or companies, as being key ingredient to an innovation culture.
David: Yeah. It's a great question and I wish, and I hope we can learn to teach failure, as silly as it sounds. Even to get into a college or a university there's one indices and that's grade point average. You gotta have a high-grade point average, especially in engineering, it's fairly high. I ask myself is that the only indicator that we can come up with? I think there's others. I won't say it's the only thing, but it has a big weigh in. You come in with success and if you have a high-grade point average you go look for high marks all the time. Then you get into industry and realize you might not be as smart as you think because you haven't had those experiences. What we can do in industry is talk about that from our experiences of what failure looks like. You want to make sure people don't get injured or hurt in areas, but I can tell you many stories, and probably most of learnings about when things didn't go as well as they could have. Or there was in incident where something caught on fire or blew up or didn't work right. Or we lost production. Those are the learnings that we have to actually recognize and share with others. We have a term that's used in industry is "lessons learned". Companies like ArcelorMittal Dofasco, Suncor, we always do that. At the end of a project or end of a startup its lessons learned. What could we have done differently? I think young people have to be prepared. There will be failure. There will be unsuccessful initiatives and projects. Don't let that be a negative. Learn how you can move forward on that. But if you don't have any of those you're going to be in trouble. You've got to have those learnings out there and use those experiences and hopefully there's good ventures. Organizations have to be prepared to do the diagnostic and support the development of others by talking about what could have been done differently. But that's hard nowadays.
Louis: David Santi, thank you very much for your time.
David: Thanks, Lou.