December 21, 2017

By Patricia Kopec

At Intrigue, we believe in empowering leaders and strengthening communities — that’s why we have decided to spotlight a ‘Local Leader’ each month!

Our Local Leaders are individuals who have shown both professional leadership and leadership within the community.

We are proud to live and work in communities with many amazing people who exemplify these qualities!

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Kithio Mwanzia is the President and CEO of the Guelph Chamber of Commerce and an active member of the community.

Watch the ‘IM in a Car’ segment below to see Kithio being interviewed by Intrigue co-founder Rob Murray — it’s all about engaging your team and leveraging their expertise.

I know a lot of people watching this will probably already know who you are, but for the people that may not, tell me a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been in Chambers for a long time, this is my third Chamber of Commerce. I started out on the public policy and public relations side of the Chamber world — I think that’s one of the most important values that Chambers can really offer communities.

To be community advocates and also be their advocate in terms of looking at the future and saying here’s the impact that might happen from 123 policy decision or government regulation, and here’s the impact that the government needs to know. It’s hard work. You form relationships with people in government,  but you’re also representing your members — you’re representing businesses.

It’s an interesting line to be able to walk and sort of weave through as a translator. People in government don’t necessarily understand the language of business and, equally at times, business doesn’t really necessarily understand the language of government. For a business, quick is tomorrow, whereas for government, six months from now is quick. So it’s about really being able to break that down and let them know what the impact of their decisions is going to be.

Where were you before Guelph, and what are you up to now?

I was in Niagara. I worked for the Greater-Niagara Chamber of Commerce. I was the Interim CEO and I was a Policy Coordinator in the St.Catharines-Thorold. Then, as Guelph was doing it’s search for a new CEO, I was very drawn to the city so I decided to participate and was lucky enough to be selected. So, now I’m here.

As President of the Guelph Chamber of Commerce, what sort of things are on your priority list?

My priority list right now is that businesses are being hit from all ends. There’s a federal tax proposal and there are labour regulations that are on the brink of changing provincially. On all sides businesses are being hit and we are saying it’s not like there isn’t value to the proposals that are being brought forward. So, is there value to changing the workplace to be updated to today’s standards? Sure, there’s value to looking at that and to looking at the type of worker that exists now and how they should be able to work in the workplace. But, to have some of these rules come into place as of January 1st, 2018, when they were announced in June of 2017? No company has 30% extra value just lying around that they’re going to be able to extract.

The same thing goes with the Federal tax proposal, where there was a real clear disconnect as these were being proposed. They didn’t understand how businesses treat things like passive income, or how businesses say “when it rains it pours” like a couple of lost contracts, or some kind of significant business interruption. You need to be able to extract from those investments to be able to pay your 30 employees. You won’t take a salary as a business owner, but you owe it to your team to be able to pay them. They have families, they have obligations, so you need to be able to use your passive income to be able to do those type of things. The fact that the idea did not factor into some of the thinking surprised me, and we made a point of making it known.

We had a round table with our MP Lloyd Longfield, my predecessor. We really stressed that they weren’t looking at it the way that it needed to be looked at, so I’m optimistic that we’ve been able to make a significant case. Our advocacy has been really strong. I was in New Brunswick where our Finance Minister spoke, and we’re going to spend some time in Ottawa.

The Canadian Chamber is doing some amazing work with it’s campaign #ProtectGrowth, and we’re really looking forward to being able to see a change. I don’t think there was any malice, I just think it was a disconnect from understanding how small businesses function. I’m lucky that I get to tour factories and farms and know business people, and know about their models and challenges, so I can speak much more quickly on what it is they do with things like passive income.

There are a lot of interesting opportunities and challenges that come along with adopting a team and having a new person at the helm. What kind of things have you experienced and what have you learned when it comes to leading a team, specifically entering a new team?

I was named one of the youngest Chamber CEOs in the country and that comes with all kinds of things that you do need to consider. You need to be able to think about how your decision making is going to be shaped by that as being a reality. Also how your decision making is shaped as you being an outsider. I didn’t grow up here in Guelph, but I know Chambers and I know how Chambers’ operations are able to function. The most important thing was team dynamic — how do you build the right team, and how do you shepard a new vision through a team.

You have two teams. You have your Board of Directors, that I report to, and then you have your internal team that you work with every single day. Being able to work effectively with all of those concentric circles was something that I had to be very dynamic about.

When I first started, I had very solid management principles — the appropriate way to be able to manage an organization. For instance, you need to have a very strict, line-driven departmental system which is a very traditional way to view management of operations. That evolved to thinking about more of a collaborative approach to problem-solving and establishing smaller teams that can tackle various issues. To sort of scrub away the direct line departmental stuff that existed before. Then, to what extent are you drawing on your Board of Directors and their knowledge, and everything that they know from a government’s perspective, ensuring that there are clear lines between governments and operations. It’s tricky whether you’re the youngest CEO or the oldest CEO, so being able to navigate that was an incredible experience. One of the fundamentals that never changed in all of that was what I wanted for my team and what I wanted for the community, those things remain the unshakable principles by which everything was driven by.

What I wanted for my team, especially the ones that were just emerging out of university or the ones that had been there for a little bit and were thinking about what to do next, was having the Chamber be an incredible training ground for them. Learning, growing, and then moving on to other things — being ambassadors of the Chamber in the community and being entrepreneurs. For the job to be able to grow them was very important, and remains an unshakable principle today.

The other side is what I hoped and wanted for the community. I arrived here in this incredible community that at times needs to be told it’s incredible, and that it’s ok to trumpet that you’re amazing. Spending the time being able to really elevate the community and take the Guelph brand around the world and be bullish about it.

There were some meetings in Ottawa where I was sitting down with Toyota and other large companies where we all introduced ourselves and the Minister said, “I know why everyone else is here, but I’ve got to know about Guelph, how did you find yourself in this meeting?” So I talked about us going global and building that brand, taking great small and medium-sized companies in Guelph and giving them global opportunities.

Things that have never changed,principles. Line departments, reporting lines…those will change, exolve, be what they will be. What remains unshakable for me has been what my hope is for the team and the way that I am motivated to work with them every day and bring out the best in them.

Then, what my hope is for the community is to give everything that I can to be able to bring the best out of a community that I think is great, that I was drawn by.

Going back to the traditional approach to operation management, and moving more from a line-oriented focus into a collaborative small team approach, what was the catalyst for change?

I didn’t feel like we were living up to our full potential. I think that when you’re in a line format, in this instance, you’re not living up to your full potential because you don’t have the space to be creative. You have the space to fall within your line, but you don’t have the space to be creative. It took some comfort level with myself, but it was just a matter of saying, “Ok, you know what, you bring on the right team, leverage their smarts, and leverage their creativity. They have amazing ideas too.” It doesn’t have to be so formulaic that it takes away from the creativity that they have. Spend lots of time having the team as you like.

Fusion Homes, which is an incredible company here in Guelph, has an onboarding process that is rigorous, to say the least — but there is payoff. The technical things you can teach easily. The culture and the fit is not something that you can teach, it’s not a technical piece.

Arriving at that point of culture and fit over technical, in the work that we do as a voluntary membership, we have to often work to make sure we’re offering a value proposition. Culture and fit are huge, so I’ve been spending a lot of time arriving at that point because I didn’t start there. I had to arrive at that point where some of the fundamentals, that you think are great, have to be thrown out the window.

What’s one thing that you’ve done with how you recruit that might give some insight towards how someone might make culture and fit come to light for them?

Our onboarding is problem-solving. With anything that we do, whether it’s an event or something along those lines, if you’re new, the onboarding for you is solve this problem and work with the team to be able to solve it. What that does for us is allow us to be able to get out of the echo chamber. The new person brings new ways of us solving that problem that we may not have thought of. For a 190 year-old organization, it’s common to hear “we’ve always done it this way.” So, this allows for us to have the new person get in there and offer up their ideas. No idea is a bad one. We’ll correct course if it’s a good one, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll correct course. What onboarding has done is allowed us to allow the new people to make mistakes. That’s the thing that everybody is terrified by when they first go anywhere — they are terrified to make a mistake. Make your mistakes and do it quickly. Realize you’ve made a mistake and we’ll move on from it quickly and that’s okay.

Tricia wants to ensure your experience with Intrigue is awesome! She helps non-profits, businesses, and communities grow together. Tricia assists the sales team in business development. Outside of work she is an avid tea drinker, world traveller and loves getting active and cooking healthy.

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