Vanguard Magazine

GAME CHANGER See the full interview online Q How did you start out in the industry and how has it brought you to where you are today? My professional career has always been with Raytheon Technologies. I have a physics background – solving problems that no one else knows how to solve has always interested me. Raytheon has of- fered me a lot of opportunities from pro- gram management to business develop- ment and now leading the site. Raytheon Technologies is a technology leader and industry leader in the aerospace and defense sector. We get to walk the halls and push against physics in Canada and more importantly in Midland. Ray- theon ELCAN is a technology leader sup- porting the country that I love. Q What is your role at your organization today? I am the director for Raytheon ELCAN, a company with more than 160 years' experience delivering high precision optical systems. I am ultimately accountable for the strategic vision to grow the site, execution to deliver quality products to our customers as well as the financial performance. I see my primary responsibility as en- suring each of our 500+ employees have a safe, successful, happy work environ- ment and feel empowered to be the best they can in their roles. Q What was your most challenging moment? Especially over the last two-and-a-half years, we have realized that many things are outside of our control. I am looking to leverage the challenges we have faced with situations like losing a competi- tion, the impact of the global economy or COVID curveballs to empower and motivate my team to evaluate the situa- tion, find a learning and rally to find so- lutions to our customers' most difficult challenges. Q What was your A-HA moment or epiphany that you think will resonate most with our reader? My A-HA moment came when I was very new in the program manager role. One of my first programs was critical and it was in the worst state: the customer was not happy with us, we were late, over budget and had cost and technical challenges. My first action was to put the program on hold. I had to make some tough de- cisions and have some tough conversa- tions. Most importantly, I had to enable and empower my team to remove bar- riers. The A-HA moment for me was when I realized that in order to overcome a seemingly insurmountable challenge, I had to adopt an open, collaborative, "in- it-together" approach. The solution in- cluded the Raytheon ELCAN team and our customer. We created a true partner- ship that is still strong today. This now defines how I solve big challenges A member of my leadership team summed it up perfectly – we win and lose as a team. Q What is the one thing that has you most fired up today? My team – all day – that's easy! My favourite day of the whole year happened a couple of weeks ago – our Employee Appreciation BBQ. Any time I have the opportunity to interface with individuals, teams or the whole site, I get fueled. It's our people that drive our MIKE LEWIS DIRECTOR RAYTHEON ELCAN www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2022 39 mission and solve our customers' toughest challenges. We have an incredible work- force. Q What is a habit that contributes to your success? I am relentless. It's subtle – people don't realize it at first – but I will not stop until we have achieved our goals. Along with this, it may be counter-in- tuitive, but patience. You need to drive to a goal and get results, but changing culture or achieving a long-term plan will not happen overnight. You need to have patience to play the long game. What if you're wrong? It's okay to be wrong – probably the only thing I'm certain of is that I will be wrong. We'll all be wrong at some point. Without taking calculated risks you limit success. Continuous improvement is not just about processes. If you really embrace this mentality, you actually don't care if you're wrong. You will learn and then try again. Just take another step. What drives success is not stopping but adjusting, improving and taking that next step. Q What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the biggest changes in your industry over the next two years? For Raytheon ELCAN, as an optical inno- vation centre in Canada, the recapitaliza- tion of our country's military will be larg- est driver. The implementation of Strong. Secure. Engaged., Canada's defence strategy, along with the most recent an- nouncement about NORAD moderniza- tion will drive the technological advance- ments for decades to come, not just the next two years. This is an exciting time to be part of one of the world's largest aerospace and defence companies, Raytheon Technolo- gies. This gives us the power of reach-back into the United States for proven, trusted solutions and the runway to develop new technologies and capabilities to support our Canadian customer and our allies.

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