Leadership Excellence: A Profile on Marc Raad
Leaders play a crucial role in setting the tone for the team. At Driven By… Co. we are focused on building more motivated and engaged teams, so we set out to find Leaders who are setting a great example.
We interviewed Marc Raad, the President of Significans, an Automation Company primarily serving the printing and packaging industry.
Why did you start your company, Significans Automation?
I founded the company in 2018. It was really on the basis that there was a lot of software being built for our space, and all that software whether it was workflow automation software and/ or imposition software, it came with a huge level of complexity. My question then was, how do we take the complexity out? And that's why I started writing a business plan in 2016. At the time, most companies were going to market with their software and they were accompanying it with their training syllabus. But once there is any change in personnel (people leave / turnover), the training is gone. I also thought that to heighten the efficiency of software that software needs to speak to other software solutions. As such, the foundation of getting to the highest levels of automation is by way of integration. If we could enable software to speak with other software, remove the complexity and create “an easy button” with high-end software, then the adoption and utilization levels of said software, would be much higher. Furthermore, the ROI would be huge and therefore people would be inclined to buy more software because of a realized ROI behind it. That’s how Significans Automation came about.
And after all, the derivative meaning of the word Significans in Latin suggests significance and graphics.
What does leadership mean to you?
Most leaders find it challenging to define the term leadership because it often happens very naturally [to them]. It's an instinctive response that comes from traits like investment, care, competitiveness, and a drive to excel. My background in athletics reinforces these traits for me.
I have an investor’s background and I'm not referring to stock market investments; it's about being committed to “blue chip” opportunities, for the long haul. For example, if I have to write a cheque to the company, am I prepared to do that as opposed to waiting for my cheque on Friday from somebody else's pocketbook? To me, that embodies leadership.
Transitioning from the corporate world, where I worked for giants like HP and ESKO, I observed a tendency for corporations to prioritize accounting practices over customer relationships. This "corporately driven" approach overlooks the importance of a customer and team connections, which is detrimental to maintaining leadership positions.
I believe that a good leader is prepared to assemble an amazing team. This means that you have to be an incredible recruiter whether you're doing that for athletic purposes or you're doing that for business purposes or even a political position. There is no doubt that you’ve got to assemble a great team to succeed. You have to have an incredible 6th sense about character and the ability to identify the people that you want to go on the journey with. I feel like I’ve had the most amazing team throughout my career that I call family.. The best part is, I can pick up the phone and call them and say hey, how's it going? Let's not talk about work. Let's have a chat… we’re all in sync.
What are the character traits that you look for in members of your team?
People who are approachable and most of all people who make sure that the customer is paramount. This is what we look for because we're a service organization that needs to grow by way of its customers.
“The only KPI I give my staff is: how big of a smile are you leaving the customer with? That’s all!”
I appreciate people who are passionate about their work and take pleasure in building strong relationships with customers.
What has been your greatest challenge in a leadership role?
A leader has to be prepared to make very swift decisions and in order to do so, they need clairvoyance. My biggest challenge would be not being able to get the clarity I need for the times I need to make that final decision swiftly. There could be several reasons why I might not have clarity. It could be that the situation has not been explained well, or has not been illustrated in the best possible way. So I often have to be patient with people to offer them the opportunity and feedback to pitch ideas differently.
However, sometimes the decision I make is not to make a decision at all. The reason for that is that I believe that everyone of my staff have inner leadership skills which allow them to make decisions on their own as long as they have the discernment. If they don't feel like they have ”it”, then they can run the decision by a teammate or run it by me. I'm not just the guy that pays the check, but I'm the guy that actually wants to be everyone’s teammate so that we can forge ahead. It is important to me that we’re all rowing the boat in the same direction and, I certainly row with my team. If at a certain point in time, someone can't row as fast, then we pick up the ante for that person, because chances are in a week or two they’re going to do it back for you. It is a collaborative effort.
What are your strategies for engaging or motivating your employees?
One of the key traits I value when hiring is openness to learning. To help establish a culture of growth, we invigorate new staff to broaden their horizons outside areas of their expertise. Many of the staff operate behind a screen creating very successful programming and scripting capabilities for our customers. So what we've done is when they come on board, we engage with them, encourage them and tell them to pick a hobby that they don’t know anything about.For example, when one of our newest staff members came on board, he mentioned that he always wondered about selling. So we said to him, “Okay, here's your assignment over the next couple weeks. Go to a sewing store and then find another competing sewing store and go and see how they sell you a sewing machine differently. What kind of education are they going to provide you? Do they give you enough knowledge and the ability to say ‘I love it, I want it, how do I get more of it?’ So our staff member actually went to the store one weekend and he learned about sewing machines. He was able to identify which store sells sewing machines better, but more importantly he learned that the store that sells sewing machines better, did so by way of education, and not by a pitch.
What advice would you give to those who are new to leadership?
You need to surround yourself with great people, by way of hiring winners.
“You have to ask yourself, how do we win as a team? Think about the win and work backwards to help you understand the key points that will ultimately lead to those trophy-raising moments.”
Most leaders will act on a sixth sense. Again, a leader could come in the form of a caption of a hockey team. He has to have the foresight to anticipate the puck's trajectory and then position himself and the team accordingly. This foresight is crucial in guiding the team effectively.
But also when working in a team environment, you need to create a community with good communication, open communication and, honest communication.
What has been the most rewarding part of your experience as a leader?
I don't do what I do alone. Every day I say to my team, I can't do this without you. So I extend the most heartfelt “thank you” frequently. And yet, we've had so many wins here. We have been recognized as a Platinum vendor for Enfocus. We have outsold every reseller, minus one company, globally with software out of Tilia Labs, which is now an Esko company.
Can you imagine… our small company that outsells every other dealer and distributor globally? We constantly get doors opened for us and actually 90+% of our sales come from word-of-mouth. We have many customers come back to us. We have customers who have been with us since our inception, and we have customers who would walk through fire for us in an effort to show their brotherhood, and naturally, we would do the same for them. The bonds and relationships are fantastic wins.
But the moral of the story is we have left our customers with an ability to be successful and that's what business owners are looking for. So I think my most successful moments have been the little wins along the way that we accomplished as a team, to get us where we [customers are categorically included] are today.
I have a phenomenal team. Have you ever seen that YouTube video where there's 100 kids on the soccer field and they're racing after the ball and there are these 3 professional soccer players that are just passing the ball. The professional soccer players, with only 3 of them, end up scoring. Well, that's our team. I don't have a very big team, but we are very effective out there and the reason why we're effective is we know how to pass the ball. We play to each other’s strengths.
What are you Driven By?
I would say my drive is to create a legacy in our space. I've been very very fortunate in my career to bring digital into our space (to the print industry) and convert many printers into digital. In the past, I converted many large format packaging companies to also adopt digital finishing systems with the Kongsberg line. I've done the advent of digital and now, my focus is on digitizing their data and streamlining their operations through integration and automation. So I hope to leave a legacy where others recognize that Marc has been in this world for x amount of years and at the end of the day, he will be remembered for having revolutionized businesses, making them more automated and efficient. But overall, the truth about my work at my business, Significans, is that I'm having lots of fun building it for customers.
