EW 048 – How Leaders Can Effectively Transform Institutions To Get Long Lasting Results – Winning with Michael Mahon, CEO of Alberta Innovates

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.967)
Mike, welcome to the show.

Michael Mahon (00:03.502)
Thank you, good morning.

Gordon Sheppard (00:05.203)
Well, it's just so wonderful to have you here because you are new in a leadership role, out of retirement, back in the game, doing your work at Alberta Innovates, but you've led large institutional change throughout your career, along with some hockey stuff there in the background that I'm sure we could have some fun talking about if we needed to, and then all kinds of other adventures that you've been on throughout your career. So we're very lucky to have you here today. There's a lot of people though that haven't met you. So if you had to describe yourself, what would you say?

Michael Mahon (00:33.838)
Sure, thanks. Well, as you said, I'm the CEO of Alberta Innovates. I've been in that role for 18 months or so. And prior to that, you know, I was really involved in academic leadership in both the province of Alberta and in the province of Manitoba and nationally. I chaired Universities Canada, which is an organization of all the universities in the country. And along the way, I have been involved in...

both research and innovation at an individual level as a researcher and faculty member, but also at an institutional level. And so when I was asked to take on this role at Alberta Innovates, was an interesting question. It was not a question I was actually contemplating when I was asked. And so I had to step back and think about whether or not this is something that I wanted to do.

I knew so much about Albert Innovates having worked with it in the province for about 25 years, but hadn't anticipated leading it. The reason I said yes is because the mission of the organization is so important, I think, to the province, but also resonates with me. And so in introducing myself, I would say I'm a passionate guy about innovation and research and how they can support.

the evolution of communities and society and so that's what I've spent my career focused on.

Gordon Sheppard (02:05.544)
how wonderful and how nice to be sort of top of game with not a lot of risk. I think it's interesting when I hear about the folks that come out of retirement, do you know what I mean? Like you've got a real chance now having sort of been in those rooms at those other times in our, you know, high-end leadership careers, but now you're in a position where I think you can really sort of play out the values and the vision that you bring to combine into Alberta Innovates at this time. This is really interesting. So also I heard ecosystem wise,

You've been a researcher, you've been in the trenches, but then you've been at that institutional level, cross province, cross institution, and also at the national level as well. So I think we're talking to the right guy, which is a good sign in terms of this type of interview, obviously, and good choice on their part to get you in with your vision. If you had to describe your biggest win throughout this journey, and there's been many, and so it's almost unfair in a sense to get you down to one, but I think the one...

that we talked about in the pre-interview that you might be able to identify here will be a really good story to talk through that will then help us step into some of this current stuff that you're doing as well. What would that win be?

Michael Mahon (03:08.14)
Yeah, thanks. think, you know, and you and I talked about this, I think the win that I...

that I've reflected back on as to the extent to which it really did was transformational in terms of the changes we undertook was when at the University of Lethbridge we started thinking about how best to position the university in order for it to continue to grow and evolve. And one of things that I was struck by when in fact I was interviewing for the role and chatting with different folks about the University of Lethbridge was that

the UofL has about 70 to 75 percent of its students that come from away. Only about 25 percent of the students come from Lethbridge and surrounding area. And as I started digging into that, one of the things that I was really struck by was that in order for the university to be successful and to grow and to be seen as vital, it needed to continue to attract students from across the province, across the country and around the world.

And so over time we came up with, through a lot of discussions with folks, the concept of the University of Lethbridge as a destination university, as a university that was charged with creating an environment that enabled people who come from away to have a really successful and enjoyable experience, and to do so in an environment that was really designed to support the diversity

of folks that came from all parts of the province, the country and the globe. And so this concept of Destination University, we built into a framing of how we saw the university positioning itself. And so the strategy that we came up with was called Destination 2020 and was really built around this concept of growing the university as a Destination University.

Michael Mahon (05:13.104)
undertook a process of envisioning and building a new science building and that building, the process around designing and envisioning that building was called the Destination Project. And so we really came, we really built the notion of destination into the institution.

One day I spent some time chatting with folks about, you know, where we were going with this and how the, you know, the extent to which it resonated with them. And one of the things that I was most struck by in chatting with some folks that worked in the building and grounds department in the university was how they were thinking about the destination concept within the realm of facilities,

building and grounds.

know, cleanliness of the campus, et cetera. And one of them said to me, so we really believe that our contribution to this concept of being a destination university is very much brought to life by ensuring that we have the most beautiful buildings, that our campus is attractive and inviting, that we have great food services that, you know, make people happy when they go

have some lunch or breakfast or dinner, etc. But I remember stepping back and thinking to myself, man, that really says a lot about what we've been able to do in terms of creating a vision and a concept that people could come around that really helped the university to continue to evolve and grow. Not just by having faculty members or deans and others buy into this and really see this.

Michael Mahon (07:06.832)
as a way to sort of build the next generation of the University of Lethbridge, but to have all those that are working in the trenches in different ways come around the same concept. And so that to me was a real win because it really was something that was designed conceptually to feed into our communication strategy, to feed into our fundraising, feed into the programming that we were developing.

but as it grew, it really turned into this concept that people really came around. And, you know, I've been involved in lots of different strategic planning over the course of my career in all the different roles I've had, but it was this one that really resonated for me because it really did seem to find a sweet spot with people as they thought about how they could come around a concept.

Gordon Sheppard (08:04.295)
There's so many things to unpack in there. Congratulations, one, that's remarkable, right, to get that type of leadership opportunity. Large institution, right, in terms of what you came in there at the beginning. You're making me smile. My sister was a successful elementary school principal. And she said, Gord, know, one of the most important people you gotta talk to when you get into work, you gotta make friends with the janitor. Because if you don't, then you lose the whole thing. So what can we hear in this? We can hear your leadership style. We're gonna hear that this didn't take.

Michael Mahon (08:19.189)
Okay.

Michael Mahon (08:24.45)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (08:32.231)
place in a month, you know what mean? In terms of what you did when you walked in. We're gonna hear a little bit about the timeline in just a second. There's also this idea of having, like you said, having been in all your strategic planning scenarios. I've led strategic planning facilitation. You know when they're gonna stick and you know when they're not gonna stick. But I hear down to one word, destination. And that's remarkable to actually get a rally cry around one word that people can kind of get into.

really shows off the kind of the vision and the mission that's sort of involved with there. Well, that's a ton to be proud of. And again, how lucky to have that maybe almost once in a lifetime leadership, although I know you're onto other ones too and you'll make them even better. But that's that one where it kind of worked, but it was a big idea and it took place over a long time. If we had to jump into what I call the anatomy of a win, now that we know what the win is, when we talk about the strategy, the work plan, people, operations and results, and we've already highlighted that you've got the strategy, this sort of vision down to, I'm gonna say a word simplistically, and it,

crossed through all areas of the business and allowed the fundraisers to go to work, allowed the faculty to go to work, allowed the grounds people to go to work in a sense. Any other strategic highlights that you'd to point out in this win when you sort of reflect on it?

Michael Mahon (09:37.376)
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I was really pleased about was the extent to which the concept went beyond the walls of the University of Lethbridge. And so when I mentioned that we were building this or actually in the early days, we were seeking funding to build a new science building. The university's science labs were circa early 1970s. Think of the worst science labs we ever had in the high school and they were about that.

And so we and and we're UofL is a great science university in fact one of the best science universities of primarily undergraduate universities in the country ranked Yearly in that manner so we were we were achieving in spite of and so as we were trying to bring resources to this project and in particular sell the provincial government around this as a need we decided it was really important to

bring the community into the equation. And so we started having a series of conversations with the mayor and council in Lethbridge, with the school board, you your wife's point about how important teachers are and education is, with the business community, et cetera. And we brought them together to talk about this concept of a destination project as a way to continue to build this destination.

university, but in particular for them to see how this would be an enabler for the broader community, for the City of Lethbridge, for the County of Lethbridge, for the school board, etc, etc, for the business communities. And so this was, you know, something that we hadn't done before. I mean, we'd had many community consultations, but not where we really asked the community to be part of this exercise with us. And so we had the

the Premier down one day, we as in the community, talking about how important Lethbridge was, etc. as know, Edmonton does, Lethbridge does, Grand Prairie does. And so each of us, you know, the Mayor, many others, had a chance to speak for three or four minutes to the Premier. And when the Mayor spoke, one of the things he said to the Premier was, the number one capital project for the City of Lethbridge is the destination project

Michael Mahon (12:05.77)
at the University of Lethbridge.

And you know, one of the things I've said to people about that for the many years since is that if you can get a mayor to declare the number one capital project for the city to be a non-city capital project, but to be a capital project of a university or whatever else, then you've accomplished something in terms of helping people to rally around, you know, a theme, a concept, a vision. And when the mayor said that, that

That day, I thought to myself, okay, we've done it. Now, we still didn't have the money. We did eventually get $260 million from the province, which was the largest capital project in the history of the university. But that day said to me, we have achieved something as a university and as a collective that is as important to the community as it is to the university, and that is an achievement for certain.

Gordon Sheppard (13:06.119)
Congratulations, I mean, what an exciting thing to do and thank you for having spent time. I've done bricks and mortar studying as a student, Queens University and the University of Alberta. The bricks and mortar islands, you're saying, no, no, no, we went way beyond that. We broke the walls down, we got out into the community, we made it a collective. And that was the way big things were gonna get done. And a $260 million investment is obviously a testament.

Michael Mahon (13:13.836)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (13:30.033)
to that very, very thing. And there's so many nuances to this to actually get that to occur, relationship building, bridge building, all the different things you had to do over time to make things occur. Wow. How neat to hear about the strategic highlights. And I'm sure we could dig in further if we had to, because again, when you're making those fundraiser jobs easier based on a clear vision that you can go out and communicate, when you're getting these local, that's just a wonderful thing. Anytime we have a strategy, we need a work plan. So there's sort of a timeline. There's sort of a moment when it's not a destination, right? There's a moment.

beginning it's a concept. What was the sort of time from concept to what you would say when that was the full destination was implemented and achieved? Did it take a month, a year, a day? How long did that take?

Michael Mahon (14:11.34)
Yeah, so I arrived in 2010 and started the process. And I would say it took a couple of years for us to really start to come around this concept in a way that was...

you know, to be fulsome. I started talking about the concept as soon as I arrived on campus with folks, because I was convinced that it was something that could be quite meaningful. But I started doing it through conversation mode around the coffee tables and around meeting rooms and chats with folks to really sort of socialize whether what I was thinking had

any resonance with folks. And then as that started to become clear as something that seemed to resonate, we started to build on the concept into a strategic planning exercise. the strategic planning exercise was in the end about a three year exercise from start to finish for sure.

Gordon Sheppard (15:25.359)
Interesting, and I love where you're going with that. Thank you for the word socialize. There's a lot of leaders that listen to this show. And this idea of instead of that strat planning day and then we walk out in the world and it's all perfect. You've actually taken sort of a more of an entrepreneurial approach to that to say, wait a second, let me test this in what? A thousand coffee conversations, right? Those hallway meetings, little moments. You're getting feedback, you're getting language feedback that you would have made a massage that with, but you came in, you the concept and then you're able to socialize this.

Michael Mahon (15:43.438)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (15:54.814)
and make it kind of go forward. And that we start in 2010, would you say project completion or, you know, it's all kind of, you know, it reached its peak? How many years after 2010 did it take?

Michael Mahon (16:04.302)
Well, mean, the concept started to become more real in terms of a strategy by about 2013. Destination project didn't start to be built till 2017. And so the start to finish that one project, which was not the only part of Destination, but symbolically, that was a 10-year exercise for me.

Gordon Sheppard (16:27.997)
I can't tell you how often I hear 10 years on this podcast from a leadership perspective. It doesn't matter if people are building, delivering safety software, 10, 20 years, 10 years to get new inventions into market. Isn't that interesting around 10 years to make big things happen. When we talk about these hundreds of millions, when we talk about destination, when we talk about the legacy impact, boy, that'd be really fun. Now we're in 2025. We could go back and measure the legacy impact of getting those infrastructure things built along with the mood that was created over that time. Cause that would linger for a long time as well in terms of

carry over in what you've done. So we've heard of highlights from the strategy. We've got a feel for the work plan and some of what it takes. Thank you for socialize. Again, I'm just going to pick on that for second because I think it's just really unique. Because the third step in the anatomy of a win is to talk about people. And you're a key driver in this. And I know there's others and probably hundreds of others in a sense. But let's just start with you for a second in terms of naming a bit of this stakeholder group and talk about you at the beginning with your attitude.

And how did your attitude evolve? Was it just all easy sailing? Was it peaks and valleys? How would you describe that approach?

Michael Mahon (17:28.77)
Yeah, I know we used a lot of different approaches. mean, I will say the very first conversation I had around this was with Premier Ed Stelmak. And so he came to open a building that I had nothing to do with raising the money for, the previous president had. It was in the very first fall of my first year as president, so would be September 2010. And Premier Stelmak came down

to open the building and we had dinner with him after a group of folks. I was sitting beside him and I started socializing with him. And so, you know, as I've thought over the years about this using different metrics, the number of premiers I spoke to about this, the number of ministers, deputy ministers, mayors, council members,

MLAs, MPs, et cetera, et cetera. I've actually never gone back and counted them all, but I could because it's all public information. on just the public government, both municipal, provincial, federal side, it was a very significant group of individuals that we...

Gordon Sheppard (18:49.502)
absolutely. And again, we just thank you by titles because we could have those individual moments. Plus, there's something about your own secret sauce. It's one thing to have an idea. It's another thing to have the ability to communicate in those conversations, to make a connection. Because this thing about how things get done around here, That's that there's a secret. There's not a secret. It's a unique aspect of pulling all that together and then cajoling with a long horizon. This thing, somewhere in there, there's a patience on your part to go, well.

Michael Mahon (19:01.091)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (19:17.104)
You know what I think, like what was it about that you could allow, like if something's not happening in a year, do you think you're failing kind of thing? Or did you know that it was gonna take a lot, like what was your sort of inner sense?

Michael Mahon (19:18.243)
Yeah.

Michael Mahon (19:25.334)
Yeah. You know, I think the

fact that we continued to be able to have conversations with people, that they were willing to have the conversations. The fact that nobody had any given point in time around any of these things, not just that project, but many of the things. Nobody said no, or that's a terrible idea. So the reinforcement pattern, I would say, of being able to continue to have authentic conversations with folks,

to have those people seem interested and willing to continue the conversation enabled us to continue on the journey.

Gordon Sheppard (20:14.364)
Well, and a big part of this is timing. Do you know what mean? If I'm 2014 and I'm a barrel of oil, I know what I feel like, you know, at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year. I'm right, like, what's the economy doing? And so this long horizon of the internal patience, because again, I'm just going to go back and say some of those nights, the conversations didn't go well. Do you know what mean? If we tracked that, we would find that out too. But what are we finding out here? What is the leadership persistence that it takes to get?

Michael Mahon (20:33.804)
yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (20:39.548)
$260 million things done to get whole universities following along with one idea. This is really what we're getting the advantage of with this win. And again, key players, we heard the mayor in there at one point makes a declaration. That was a great moment that you described earlier as another key player. I don't mean to limit this, but if I had four hours to talk to you, I'd talk to you about everybody in the stakeholder group. But is there any one or two others that we might be missing that we need to mention for this? Or can we kind of move on to that next step?

Michael Mahon (20:57.614)
Yeah.

Michael Mahon (21:04.46)
Yeah, I mean, I think the other group that was really important were the...

broader community members. So one of the things that we did in creating this concept and really building on this concept was to make sure that we also, not only were we talking to the mayor and to the MLAs and to the MPs, et cetera, but we were constantly engaging with our alumni, with the broader community, the universities have something called a Senate with our senators and all of those folks

who

you know, come from all sorts of walks of life, have the ability to be influential in so many different ways, right? And talk to their neighbor about, you know, this idea in talking to their dentist and their doctor about these things, in, you know, bringing it to life, in chatting with even their kids and their grandkids. And so we really took a whole of community approach to how we built this

concept of destination university and then all of the related pieces of it. that exercise was really intentional. One of the things I did in the first three or four years was I went out to all of the high schools in southern Alberta and spoke to them about, not just about the university, but about the whole concept of having a post-secondary education experience. Part of what I was wanting to do was to

Michael Mahon (22:45.23)
communicate that to young people because I believe it, but also to have young people see the University of Lethbridge as a place that they would come to that believed in them and that really saw them as humans that have value.

And so that high school exercise, was actually documented by a CTV reporter in Lethbridge, and she did a series on me doing this across the course of, think, a couple of years we did it. she did a final video of the whole thing that she produced.

Gordon Sheppard (23:26.364)
Well, and I love it because we can hear then again, what does it take? And again, we haven't even dug into the leadership team that it would have taken. Do you know what mean? All those folks supporting you at that senior leadership level. But we've heard so many good things. Again, what does it take to do big things? This is what it takes. Give me 10 years. Give me the chance to go and do my experiments in those early years. And doesn't this just sound like a startup at a much larger scale in terms of what we're talking about here? So we've got strategy, work plan, people, all kinds of things to talk about in there.

Michael Mahon (23:47.309)
Yes.

Gordon Sheppard (23:52.349)
The next step in the anatomy of when to explore is operationally. There's some moments in here where I don't mean to dig into all of it, but I'm going to say you had to get some marketing materials together. There's a logo in there somewhere to tell, communicate the story. There's communications. There's other aspects around maybe prepping up on the regulatory side of things, but any highlights on the operational side that you can point at one or two of them to get this win?

Michael Mahon (24:15.31)
Sure, yeah, so I think one of the pieces was, you mentioned senior leaders, and one of the key pieces was to get our senior leadership team, first of all, to buy into this as a concept. But then secondly, within each of the portfolios, to think about how we could bring to life this concept. The vice president research, how does destination relate to the research

enterprise of the university, our finance and administration person, how does, you know, her portfolio of HR and finance and facilities, how do they think about tying into this destination concept? Our provost, you know, provost of the universities like the chief operating officer, how did he bring to life this destination concept? One of the things he did, interestingly, as an aside, is he

They identified.

through postal codes where all of our alumni and students were in Alberta. And then they developed a very focused strategy on those postal codes that were unique to the sort of context of that part of Alberta. And so how you communicated to the students and alumni that came from the Grand Prairie region versus those students that came from Calgary, which is the largest group of students that attended the university.

of Lethbridge to how students from outside of Alberta, southern BC is a big student draw area. And so this postal code exercise and then communication strategies specific to that geographical region.

Michael Mahon (26:09.12)
was a very granular approach to how do you bring destination to life, And so we, because we of course knew that, you know, why do students come from, and they do, from Northwest Territories and the Yukon and Northern Alberta, why do they come through Alberta, bypass the U of A, bypass McEwen, bypass U of C, et cetera, et cetera, and come all the way to Southern Alberta? What is it about that? Well, what we learned is number one, they wanted

a smaller community, they wanted to live in a smaller community, they wanted a smaller university, they wanted a university that seemed to understand who they were as a Northern Albertan or Northwest Territories citizen. And so the granularity of the approach, number one, was very successful in terms of student recruitment, but it was also very brilliant. And so Andy Haken, who was the provost at the time, is now the president of St. Francis Xavier University.

in Nova Scotia and doing a remarkable job in that role. And it was...

Gordon Sheppard (27:14.554)
That is just, that is absolutely so insightful in terms of that postal code thing alone. what's nice is you're giving me a full playbook here for the next university that I want to bring to life in a sense by telling me those things. And that's a very unique description of someone with a talent and again, a vision in his own right to be able to have that ability to say, okay, this is my marching orders. Okay, great. Now I'm going to apply it in my unique way. So isn't that another sort of people moment and

operational component that really brought this alive. Wow, there's so many good nuance stories in this. Strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results. Quantitative and qualitative results. Quantitatively, I'll just say what I've heard so far. $260 million building, other things that occurred in terms of there would have been municipal benefits to this as the destination. Was there an increase in student enrollment in those types? Tell me quantitatively what happened.

Michael Mahon (27:51.33)
Yes.

Michael Mahon (28:05.518)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I mean the key metrics that we can point to, number one, our student recruitment. And so our student population grew dramatically over the period of the time that we're talking about, both in terms of student numbers, but also the diversity of students in terms of where they came from. So the diversity of international students, for example, became that much more robust. so student numbers, number one. Research funding, the university was named the Research University of the Year.

and I'm going to forget about the year, but during that period of time by what's called Research Info Source. so the robustness of the research program grew substantially during that time. The fundraising was tremendously successful. we, in the end, raised over $100 million as part of a capital campaign that was rooted in this concept of the destination.

That's not at all the $260 million, that's public dollars. So the $100 million plus that we raised was all private dollars, individuals, citizens, foundations, etc. And it was very, as I said, was rooted in this destination concept. So, fundraised dollars, the largest capital campaign prior to this one was $35 million. So we absolutely knocked it out of the park in terms of fundraising.

I would say then the last one was reputationally. So there's something called the McLean's rankings. so the university over that time rose to, we never did hit number one, but we rose to number two in the country. And it's have ever since maintained somewhere between that and number five in the country for the primarily undergraduate universities of which there was like,

Michael Mahon (30:08.236)
about 35 of them. And so the sort of reputational metric was a really important one for us because it really did show that at a countrywide level, the university was now officially on the map in terms of being seen as one of Canada's great universities. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (30:26.908)
Isn't that an Alberta story to go punch above your weight? Do you know what I mean? That's not the might of our sort of known institutions. That's like University of Lethbridge, like you said, with all it's sort of what it was up against in a sense. So what a proud 10 year stretch. Gosh, how does that all come together on the qualitative side? How does it feel to talk about this win?

Michael Mahon (30:46.528)
Yeah, I mean, it feels great. you know, you said it briefly earlier, and I just want to underscore, of course, none of this happens without an amazing group of people that you work with, right, from your my board and many board chairs that I had over that time to and board members to to my senior leadership team, to all of the folks that were working at the university over the course of that period of time. And so, you know, what feels good to me is that we

you know, built something that really people were very excited about and felt good about and that we're proud of. so, you know, whereas, yeah, I'm very proud of the things that we accomplished, I'm as happy for the fact that others are proud of what we accomplished in relation to what their contribution was to that vision.

Gordon Sheppard (31:40.797)
How lucky, again, to have one of these moments where you and the leadership team get to steward this moment in time, you pull together all these different things, you create a destination. On the quantitative side, there's hundreds of millions in, there might be billions out. Do you know in terms of the overall impact of everything, I think it's just an amazing story when you talk about building, say, that area, but building Alberta, building Canada, getting those rankings to go up and punching above your weight. There's so many good things in there that happen. I need to now just dovetail.

Michael Mahon (31:54.869)
I think we have to be honest. Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (32:09.894)
We're so lucky to learn about this one win in your career and how that sort of took place over that 10 year period, because now you're in a new chapter. You're like a new bride or whatever going into your work and you're actually getting started again. Do we see sort of some carry over in a sense to what you're bringing to this now? And what sort of just briefly highlights do you want to pull us into as you sort of set up this next chapter in your life and then this next chapter of Alberta Innovates?

Michael Mahon (32:18.445)
Yeah.

Michael Mahon (32:35.022)
So one of the things that I, when I came into Albert Innovates, one of the things that I did bring was this belief that the starting point for me as a leader had to be a series of conversations. And so one of the things we had done when I was president, or brand new president of the University of Lethbridge, we did something called Meet Mike. And it was, and we gave everybody a chance, internally and externally, to meet me and to do it in whatever version they wanted. One of the greatest ones.

was with the cleaning staff. met them at 6.30 in the morning and cleaned classrooms with them, for example. So I was telling the UofL folks about this and they said to me, could we do that? Like that sounds like a cool thing to do. So we did that. We did that over the course of six months. I met with every individual in the corporation, 560 of us, in different ways, again, using whatever version of that approach they wanted to. And that really gave me a

to learn about the organization and to get granular around.

where the opportunities are, where are some of the pinch points that we really should be thinking about, and then to go beyond and do that in the community. And so I really spend a very significant amount of time in conversations with the community. That allowed us then to feed into a program review and a strategic plan that's now completed and being brought to life. But the roots of it were very similar to the roots of the

at the UofL, the roots are in people. It was about listening to people, hearing what they thought about when they thought about innovation and when they think about what role Albert Innovate should play in the innovation ecosystem. And to listen carefully enough that we could bring some of their ideas to life. And so I think one of things that I'm very focused on but happy about that I think we're starting to see some gains in is that, you know, part of what our next,

Michael Mahon (34:39.152)
version of Alberta Innovates is a vision around collaboration and partnerships and it's about how we bring the next sort of iteration of innovation supports through Alberta Innovates to the fore in collaboration. And so that piece is also very, very sort of similar to some of what we did at the OVL because, know, our belief back to the example of the mayor was

that if we could get others to come around some key concepts and work together on these things that we could see success. so that's what I hope we'll see in sort of the bringing out of the sort of package of the vision and strategy into action.

Gordon Sheppard (35:31.399)
Well, if I'm on a horse, I'm betting on you and the gang you're gonna lead now. I'm sure with a new leadership team that if we got into sort of a longer conversation, we would hear all the good stuff that's been happening in these first 18 months of your sort of tenure there. What an interesting time for you to kind of bring forward. I'm really curious in your vision, what happens in your role, sorry, it's not just you, but what I mean to say, what happens now with this version of Alberta Innovates going forward? What happens if you get it right?

Michael Mahon (35:59.904)
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think if we get it right, it will result in an even more expansive set of opportunities for people in the province who are the backbone of innovation and research entrepreneurship.

It will give them an even bigger leg up to be successful and therefore to contribute to the quality of life of the province, the prosperity of the province. So I like to think that our vision is an enabler to help support the bigger picture of success in the province, not because we will be the deliverers of that, but because we will be one of the catalysts to support that.

And so what I hope to see in the years to come is that through our funding, through our engagement, that we are able to be a catalyst for growth of innovation and entrepreneurship in this province, not just through Alberta Innovates, but through all the different partners that we have in the province and frankly beyond the province.

Gordon Sheppard (37:13.284)
feel like I'm getting caught at a dinner table if I was Mr. Stelmach right now and you were sitting beside me. can hear you warming, I can hear you socializing me right up to sort of work your secret magic along the way. I always like to ask, me one or two sentences if you had another leader at sort of your level in a sense and they were coming into their role. One or two sentences that you like to leave behind as sort of a leadership recommendation that you would have to maybe pass a bit of wisdom along at least.

Michael Mahon (37:21.324)
Yeah.

Michael Mahon (37:36.398)
Sure. Number one is to be authentic. To ensure that, you know, how you practice your leadership craft is authentic to who you are and ties into you as a person, to your experiences, to the things that you bring to the table. Because to do anything else, number one, won't be as enjoyable, I would argue, to try and be the leader that you're not. But number two, I think authentic leaders

tend to be the most successful leaders, number one. Secondly, I would say leadership is hard work and never underestimate the number of hours it will take to be successful in a leadership endeavor. And when those hours seem to be hitting you hard, my third piece of advice is to find balance in your lives because good leaders

are not working 100 % of the time. They're finding a way to have the kind of balance that allows them to display that balance to others so that people don't see them as being so fixated on the work, but they have a bigger understanding of the world around them. And secondly, think leaders that have balance are more enjoyable to work with. They're a bit more fun to have.

conversations with because they're not just talking about what's happening at work, they're talking about the amazing Oilers game that happened last night, they're talking about these sorts of things at the same time.

Gordon Sheppard (39:15.548)
Well, what a nice time for you coming out of retirement to get back in the game, to get another big project to go forward. How exciting to catch you at this moment in time. Thank you so much for sharing your win and thank you so much for being on the show.

Michael Mahon (39:28.684)
You bet. Well, thank you. was lots of fun. I enjoyed it a lot.