Navigating the intricate dance of leadership and organizational success often feels like a high-wire act without a safety net. That's why we invited Duncan Reed, a former engineer turned leadership consultant, to share the insights he gained while transforming a startup into a thriving entity in the competitive world of electronic manufacturing services. In our candid conversation, Duncan reveals the pivotal moments and decisions that propelled not just his career but also the trajectory of Creation Technologies, emphasizing the profound role trust plays in forming a robust leadership cadre.
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Click here to take the LeaderImpact Assessment and to receive the first chapter of Becoming a Leader of Impact by Braden Douglas.
Remember, impact starts with you!
Navigating the intricate dance of leadership and organizational success often feels like a high-wire act without a safety net. That's why we invited Duncan Reed, a former engineer turned leadership consultant, to share the insights he gained while transforming a startup into a thriving entity in the competitive world of electronic manufacturing services. In our candid conversation, Duncan reveals the pivotal moments and decisions that propelled not just his career but also the trajectory of Creation Technologies, emphasizing the profound role trust plays in forming a robust leadership cadre.
Thanks for listening!
Click here to take the LeaderImpact Assessment and to receive the first chapter of Becoming a Leader of Impact by Braden Douglas.
Remember, impact starts with you!
Welcome to the Leader Impact Podcast. We are a community of leaders with a network in over 350 cities around the world, dedicated to optimizing our personal, professional and spiritual lives to have impact. This show is where we have a chance to listen and engage with leaders who are living this out. We love talking with leaders, so if you have any questions, comments or suggestions to make the show even better, please let us know. The best way to stay connected in Canada is through our newsletter at LeaderImpactca or on social media at LeaderImpact. If you're listening from outside of Canada, check out our website at LeaderImpactcom.
Lisa Peters:I'm your host, Lisa Peters, and our guest today is Duncan Reed. Throughout the last 25 years as an executive in the electronic manufacturing services industry, Duncan has had the opportunity to lead and be part of some amazing teams. The EMS industry is known for its high growth and competitive nature. As such, Duncan learned early on how critical a strong leadership team is to creating a healthy organization. As a principal at DR Consulting, Duncan's passion is to help leadership teams develop healthy organizations which are great places to work and therefore outperform their competition. He is also on the founding advisory board of the Trinity Family Wealth Advisors. Duncan lives with his wife Anna Marie of 35 years in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Welcome to the show Duncan.
Duncan Reed:Thank you, Lisa, it's great to be here.
Lisa Peters:Well, it's great to be here because I'm going to add to your intro, because I read on LinkedIn, because that's where I go it says you're a certified working genius.
Duncan Reed:There you go I'm certifiable. I guess that's what it means.
Lisa Peters:Certifiable. Well, it is nice to see you again. I know we have met at a summit earlier this year, so it is nice to have you back. I'm excited to hear a little bit more about you, a little bit about your journey. We will begin, if that's good, with you.
Duncan Reed:Yeah, all right. Wow, do you want me to just go over a little bit of my journey, like my history and the thing?
Lisa Peters:I want to hear a little bit about your professional journey and how you got to where you are today. Really, it's about those pivotal moments or those turning points in that journey, that sort of propel you or move you forward or move you back, I don't know.
Duncan Reed:Yeah, so the last 25 years I've been working for well over 30. Engineer by nature, I went to Queens way back when and got my engineering degree and worked for a big corporate company Prax Air or Union Carbide at the time and lived in Edmonton out your way, a little past you and yeah, and grew up in that industry. My brother started a company called Creation Technologies with a bunch of buddies out of school back in the early 90s and they had the normal growing pains and then it took off. Through the 90s the electronics industry really took form and they grew pretty fast in the Vancouver area and then they opened a location in Toronto or Miss Saga in 98, I guess, and I joined in 99. So it was like 30 people and I didn't know much, if anything, about the industry. And then it took off. So we went from 30 people to over 400, I think, in three years. So it was crazy growth and great learning. And what they did early on is they let employees buy into the company and if you're going to take a senior position with the company which I did it was kind of all in. So I took all my RSPs and I even borrowed some money from him at the time and, yeah, it went all in Wow, crazy regrets. I think about three or four months into it, thinking, oh my goodness, what did I do? Because you couldn't just leave. It wasn't a liquid investment, so to speak, so but probably the best decision I ever made, it just. The company grew. We got some inequity partner in 2007, but I started leading a division in the Markham area and, yeah, just to give you a sense of growth. So over the 20 years we, the company, grew from I think it was like 50 million in sales at that time, but most of it was out in on the West Coast, and then we Organically grew, like I said for the, for the next three or four years and by the time I Left the company in 2019, it was, I think, 750 million in In revenue and about 3,000 people. So and it's still going strong today.
Duncan Reed:Great bunch of people still working that. But it was. There was a lot of pivotal moments in there, as you can imagine. Yeah, I think some of those big ones were just realizing that you can't do it alone and that might sound obvious, but having, I think my epiphany was. I remember I Kind of got into my role because the guy I was reporting to just said this is too much, and he actually swapped roles with me and it was his idea of mine and and then I remember thinking at one point I got a higher people that I'll want them to swap roles with me and that was a pivotal change for me. So when you hire people that way, obviously I listen to them really closely and I. A lot of those people are still friends and I'm doing great. Some are still with creation and some are doing their own thing elsewhere.
Lisa Peters:But that was a pivotal moment for me, the biggest one so going back to you, cashed in all your RSPs and Borrowed money. I can't imagine that, and well I can't. And I can't imagine my husband coming home and saying honey.
Duncan Reed:Yeah, it was pretty good about it. She was kind of, yeah and it was, I mean, it was early, early on, but it was a lot of money, yeah, and but it worked out. And you know the people that ran the company, including my brother, just very Conservative in nature because I think the problem with the industry was at that time a lot of companies went kind of went for it. So they had a big opportunity and the details around it are you, can you, you buy a lot of inventory to Build your customers products, so they have to be very financially stable because that inventory is really only good for them.
Duncan Reed:So you can imagine, if you you have all this working capital and if enough, a customer goes bust, you're, you're probably going to go down with the ship and we never took those risks and, yeah, it was, it was. But it was a lot of stressful times for sure. But doing it with people that you care about, that you respect, and in that kind of thing we, it was, it was. I look back at it with fond memories, but there is some, yeah, there was sweat on my brow for a lot of times through it, for sure.
Lisa Peters:I guess so. So you talked a little bit about you swap jobs with someone, and then you talked about you had to hire people. I believe you said you would hire people, you would swap with.
Duncan Reed:Yeah. So I just remember thinking I would hire people with more experience and and certainly More smarts than I had, and I think it was just. And then we got into this mode where we started learning together. So I don't know, you've probably heard of the global leadership summit. We started doing that, probably, and it was because it was inexpensive. It wasn't any, you know. It was really good, but it was really low cost, a great way to get leadership training.
Duncan Reed:And again, in this industry we're hiring a lot of people and you know so there's lots of dollars, lots of Actually not a lot of customers, but you need a lot of people to build product, to help engineer it, to make sure it's it's good quality, to buy them the parts that you're Used using to assemble the product. So a lot of work, people, capital in the business, and so Having good leadership structure and a good culture was critical to the business. And I think the the best part about going to the global leadership summit is we went together. Right, so you'd go to these.
Duncan Reed:You know is either at it he was usually at a church and, but we do it once a year and then my leadership team and other leadership teams around North America who went to this thing would, would, share ideas, and we integrated a lot of this good stuff, and that's actually what I love doing now is is Helping companies be healthy in building strong leadership teams and mostly use the table group stuff the Patrick Lincione Stuff that's the. The working genius is one of those, so I got certified in that, but that's a small part of it. So, yeah, that's what I, that's what I love to do now, because it made such a difference in my career to be able to, specifically to learn together and have a team that Push each other to a whole new level and cared enough about each other to make us, to make the team, better than the sum of the parts.
Lisa Peters:Yeah, I, you commented about, you know, the global leadership summit. You would take your team and it's good to share it with the team and you. You said that they were mostly at a church, so I think my question is more about the staff. How were the staff accepting Going to a church to do it globally?
Duncan Reed:I think it was. It was funny early on. So I I'm a person of faith and I and churches can be awkward sometimes, right, because they put out a different persona than maybe what you do at work. And that's what I love about Leader Impact it's fairly transparent through that. But early on, and the goal of the leadership summit early on was very churchy. It isn't now it's very appropriate to bring business people to it.
Duncan Reed:Back then I think I remember holding hands with people and singing with some of the leadership teams, so you can imagine, right, but it was a way to get away and we had celebrated. We had literally, when it was and I think, the first time we had to go far enough away that we stayed in hotels and stuff. It wasn't even local. But when it got really established we would go to somewhere close to the office and it would be a two day thing and after the first day we'd come back to my house for a barbecue and just debrief on it and we would literally say what kind of what out of these talks do we need to integrate in how we do things?
Duncan Reed:We changed the way we did yearly reviews. We developed a really cool way to. We called it an annual partnership discussion and still, the best thing I've ever seen in an annual inventory of relationship is what I'd call it with the people that you work with. But yeah, a lot of that came out of these great teachings in there and a big part of this the table group stuff, five dysfunctions of a team and really taking people through, making their organization have a lot of clarity around why they exist and what they do and how they behave. That kind of thing is what I love to do now, because it makes it better.
Lisa Peters:All right, all right. Well, our next question is about your best principle of success, If you have one and if you can tell us a story that illustrates it.
Duncan Reed:Yeah. So I think I'd be repeating myself a bit, but it's again. It's that you can't do it on your own and having a little bit of humility I mean I don't think of myself as a super humble guy, but I think I put myself in positions where I have to ask for help a lot and certainly when you do that, I think people what is it? Craig Groschelle says it really well. He says people wanna follow a leader. That's real, as opposed to one that is on a pedestal. Because I think when people see a leader learning, they're gonna follow along because they wanna learn as well.
Duncan Reed:And that's been a huge part of my journey is to have people around who have no problem saying hey, that wasn't cool what you did in that meeting, or that you pushed too hard in the circumstance, and just have people that I did life with as opposed to did work with. So I was fortunate, I think, in most of my career, to be able to have a lot of transparency between my work life, my family life and my faith even and I wouldn't ever consider myself as a person who goes out and preaches or anything like that. But I think it's just Jesus just loved the people around him and that was really evident and I hope that's what people saw me doing, see me doing so I think that's probably the biggest learning. But, boy, I have a ton of stories where I've mocked up royally and had a team that picked me up, and probably the funniest story I could tell you is we used to probably to a fault, pray, play practical jokes on each other and we had pretty strong relationships with our customers because we didn't have a lot of customers but so we had.
Duncan Reed:We were really an extension from these customers' companies, so we got to know them pretty well, that they got involved in practical jokes and I probably took a few more of them than others. But I had a couple of times where people did they had a customer threaten the business to me or something like some big deals like that, and where they got super nervous about it. But it was just. We just felt if you could have a strong working relationship with the people and make it more about again doing life together all the way around, that it would be more enjoyable and you would take the business more seriously. You'd own it. A big part of how we interacted with our customers and each other was we wanted to feel and act like owners, and that was a huge part of what we did. I could tell you stories, but they're too long, I think, but yeah.
Lisa Peters:As the principle of success and saying you can't do it on your own. As a woman, I think sometimes it's hard to ask for help because you're seen as weak. And then you think, what will people think? And it is a struggle and as I listen to you I know that it makes a stronger team. Like I know all the good things, but there's this little nagging of what will people think and we read a lot of books in Leader Impact about that and as women it's so nice to come together and talk about that. We're not alone.
Duncan Reed:Yeah, and I think so. There's obviously a difference tonight. For obvious reasons, I can't fully relate to that. I just know that I've never followed someone that wasn't real about their successes and their failures, right, and I think even all those books that you read, most of them talk about that changing. The thing that caused the change in their life was failure and what they did to get back on top of it.
Duncan Reed:And I was forcing, I had some. Well, part of it and I'm not saying I'm a champion of having women in the workplace and all that kind of stuff, but we just needed the best people and it was hard to find people. So I think at one point I'd have anywhere from six to 10 people on a leadership team at a time and more than a couple of times half of them were women. So which wasn't? I don't know if that was reflective of the workforce or not, but it was just because they were the best. I mean, it was purely out of being selfish to get those people on that team right. So but I hear what you're saying. I think that can be a challenge.
Lisa Peters:Yeah, yeah. So you kind of talk a little bit about failings and mistakes, and obviously we know that we learn more from our failings and mistakes than our own successes, and I was wondering if you could share one of your greatest failings or mistakes and what you learned from it.
Duncan Reed:I think it again. There's a lot of them. I think one of the ones that comes true is that it was really in relationships with the team in the early days was not really being able to understand where people were coming from and having kind of the emotional intelligence of reflecting on how, if I felt a certain way and I thought I was being true to what was right, I assumed everybody knew that and that was a very bad assumption. So I was really using empathy and going through some difficult discussions with people that helped me be seen as a person who cared, but also helped me grow as a person so I could really understand where those people were at. So in specific situations, you know, I'd have people that I felt weren't performing and instead of really being able to talk to them in a way that gave them feedback that we could talk it through, I think I had the assumption that they knew they weren't performing in a way. So how did I had? So it just created more attention. So I think now I'm a lot better at just kind of entering that kind of that what would feel like a dangerous conversation and and and have it out, say it feels this way. How are you feeling and trying and try and get everything on the table and hopefully there's enough trust there that you can work it through.
Duncan Reed:And in a lot of cases, man, the the change in people's attitude and their ability to perform it and my ability to work with them change significantly. So that is probably a lot of hardships through that, especially when you're busy right, you're in a growing business and it's it's not like you get these. You sit down at the end of the day and you relax and you think through every little conversation you had. I think it's just that slowing down and realizing how important that is, particularly when you you get into a more senior role and you have more people that you're dealing with.
Duncan Reed:The other one I just just the other side of that too is working with people that you report to. So I wasn't, I wasn't the owner of the company and I wasn't the CEO, so I had to deal with the team of people that I was, you know, running several divisions that reported into these people, and it's the same thing, you know. Is there a good bit of trust? Am I showing them that I care about their, their roles and what they have to get through, or is it, you know? Is it all about me? So just getting perspective and doing that has been probably the where I failed the most, but where I able, I think, what I've learned through the journey as well.
Lisa Peters:Yeah, our group is reading Bernay Brown's Daring Greatly and we're talking about vulnerability, and you can't be vulnerable with someone unless you trust them.
Duncan Reed:So I'm thinking to what I'm, what I'm reading right now, when you say that it's you wouldn't have a team if you didn't have trust and you would mean that's not, yes, not empathizing with who you are and what you're going through, right yeah pretty hard anyways make that connection yeah right.
Lisa Peters:So obviously I mean you are a city chair of leader impact. You know that we, our group leader impact, wants to grow per person personally, professionally and spiritually, for increasing impact, and I was wondering if you could share an example of how the spiritual makes a practical difference in your life as a leader.
Duncan Reed:I'm at, I think, in my journey right now it's gonna say related to age, but I don't think it's related to age, I think it's just the journey I'm on right now is it's so evident that me, seeking to grow my relationship with Jesus in a new, a newer way, all the time our church is going through this thing called practicing the way by John Mark Homer it's not by him, but it's in it's it's just talking about being an apprentice of Jesus that's trying to do what he would do and it it rings so right in a way that you know, I think you know I committed my life to Jesus probably 45 years ago and the journey I'm on now I I don't know, I just tell. So I simply tell people that my personal experience has been that with a relationship with Jesus, my life's better, I'm a better person through it and my life is more full. So that's that's wherever it is. It's better than it would have been and I think, I think that it's a game changer for me. So, and how did it affect my professional life? Was in a huge way because it helped me.
Duncan Reed:I think, out of selfishness and about just thinking in myself I would have blown people. Oh, you know, just pushed people to the side. Whether you know, they reported to me or I reported to them. I just write them off if, if I didn't have understand what Jesus did for me, right, it's that kind of yeah, they're a person, what you know, what's my role in this to do? So I think it affects everything I do. Now that that sounds a little super spiritual, I guess, but and it's not meant to be that way, because I feel like I'm an infant on that journey in a lot of ways, because I'm not created a lot of stuff, but I just want to draw near to him yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but no, it's great.
Lisa Peters:You said I don't know if it's the journey or the age, and that is a big conversation with with, I think, in my group, is things, things are shifting and and I say it's age, I'm getting smarter, I don't know, but it is the journey I'm on and and the people I continue to surround myself with and I make those choices. Now, you know, maybe in the in the past it would be a group I had to be involved, or I mean not that I had to be involved with, but you know it's children's group or a hockey group or like you know it, you have to be involved. And now it's my kids are both gone out of the house and I get to choose you know I'm choosing my journey, so yeah, I think we might be, mike.
Duncan Reed:I have two boys and they're both in her 20s. One's a professional, he's an engineer too and he's doing his thing, and the other one's just finishing university and but I get to hang around, not only get to hang around with them, but I get to hang around with all their friends and boy, I learned a ton from those guys because it's their, it's a different world now and their, their perspective is well, they believe it's well informed. So they get to do, you know, to put all that together. But yeah, I, I just it's pretty fun to be able to talk to them about how my relationship with God has changed my life and how it's unfortunate that both my kids have the same faith in there and it's changing their life too.
Lisa Peters:So, yeah, well done dad yeah, I don't know so far, so good yeah, so far so good. So I mean we know that leader impact is dedicated to leaders having a lasting impact. So, as you continue to move through this journey, as we just talked about, have you considered what you want your faith legacy to be when you leave this world?
Duncan Reed:yeah, you know, I I was one of the questions you threw at me and I don't I think it.
Duncan Reed:I just want to be able Jesus to say, hey, well done, my good and faithful servant, which is so far away from where I'm at. I just, I just want to be able to do his work when I'm putting a situation, to be able to do it, and I'm still learning. So I I hope that I can stay on that path and keep my eye on him, because I always, I tell people all the time now it's, it feels like there's so many distractions. It feels like, you know, if you're in the wake of a boat and you stay focused and Jesus is in the boat, you're just staying close to that and there's all these distractions trying to come in and I see myself and others just getting distracted and you leave the wake and you start going down and for all the right reasons, but suddenly you're, you're out in the waves and it doesn't make sense. So I just want to stay in the wake. That's, that's kind of my goal and I hope, I hope people will see my desire to do that anyways, if not not full result.
Lisa Peters:So I hope you're a boat guy?
Duncan Reed:I'm not. I have a cottage and I have a boat, so I'm not the extent of it. I used to water ski when I was younger, so yeah, yeah.
Lisa Peters:I get the analogy. I like boats, so our last question for you is what brings you the greatest joy?
Duncan Reed:I think, having good deep learning conversations. I'm not the kind of guy that'll go to a party and talk about the weather. I just I'd probably be not a good party person that way, but it's, it's just. Even I'm like I drive my guys nuts because my my two boys nuts because if they bring friends home, I just get into deep conversations with them and I love it right, and I'll talk about work and their careers and hopefully the faith aspect I'll come into it, but not necessarily just it's just deep, so otherwise it's, it's. It's not worthy of time, right?
Duncan Reed:yeah that's what I love. I love to be able to do that that's awesome when my daughter brings friends home.
Lisa Peters:I just pepper them with questions and I know she's listening how do they like?
Duncan Reed:how do they like that? Do they like that? I think do.
Lisa Peters:I'm like. I mean, I ask them, but it's engaging right, it's, it's being part of the conversation, it's it's it's welcoming them into your home. I'm sure those, I'm sure your boys friends love it yeah, it's fun, you know yeah all right, so well. This brings us to the end of our podcast. Duncan, I want to thank you for spending the last half hour with us that was pretty easy peasy, hey yeah, it's good all right.
Lisa Peters:So if people are listening and they want to engage with you and find out more about you, how can they find you, or what is the best way?
Duncan Reed:yeah, I think linkedin's the best way. It's easy this way. So it's fine, man linkedin, it's pretty easy and that's Duncan. Read double E yeah double E awesome, well yeah all right.
Lisa Peters:Well, I want to thank you again, duncan, for joining us. It has been a fabulous half hour. I love being here.
Duncan Reed:I just, I just love being here, just to hear your stories while you're doing great, so keep up a good time. It's been a pleasure thank you all right.
Lisa Peters:Well, if you're part of leader impact, that brings us to the end of this podcast. But if you are part of leader back, you can always discuss or share this podcast with your group. And if you are not yet part of leader impact, I would like to find out more and grow your leadership. Find our podcast page on our website at leaderimpactca and check out our free leadership assessment. You will also find on our webpage chapter one of Brayden Douglas's book becoming a leader of impact. You can also check out groups available in Canada at leaderimpactca or, if you're listening from anywhere else in the world, check out leaderimpactcom or get in touch with us by email info at leaderimpactca and we will connect you. And if you like this podcast, please leave us a comment, give us a rating or review. This will help other global leaders find our podcast. Thank you for engaging with us and remember impact starts with you.