EW 022- How To Win By Building Canada’s Next Generation Of Entrepreneurs – with CEO Cheryll Watson And Her Team At Junior Achievement Northern Alberta

Gordon Sheppard (00:01.452)
Cheryll, welcome to the show.

Cheryll Watson (00:04.36)
Hello, good afternoon. What a fantastic day it is.

Gordon Sheppard (00:08.602)
It is a fantastic day because we've got you here speaking on behalf of Junior Achievement and all the good things that kind of go with leading that organization and the good things that we're gonna be learning from you here today. But many of the people that are listening to the show wouldn't know who you are. So if you had to explain, you know, who you are and tell them a bit about you, please let us know what that is.

Cheryll Watson (00:30.324)
would say first of all the thing that I'm the most proud of that I like to talk about is that I am a mom and a stepmom of four incredible young adults. I am the fortunate wife of an amazing and supportive man and I'm a very, very active community builder. And the work that I'm doing right now, I'm just so thrilled to be the CEO and president of Junior Achievement Northern Alberta.

I am also the chair of STEM Collegiate, which is a brand new public charter school in Edmonton. And I'm also the chair of the Downtown Revitalization Coalition.

Gordon Sheppard (01:11.992)
So you're backing it up when you say you're a community builder, right? That's not just doing one thing, that's doing multiple things. Help me out, STEM stands for, and why is that important?

Cheryll Watson (01:21.15)
science, technology, engineering and math and we, our public charter school is then focused in those disciplines. So if you think about the options that kids get to participate in a school, all of our options are focused in those disciplines.

Gordon Sheppard (01:39.138)
Love it. And downtown revitalization. I mean, that's, you know, you get that done in a week, don't you think? That's not an easy one to chew off.

Cheryll Watson (01:46.292)
There's 35 of us that are members of this steering committee and we've been at this unfortunately a couple of years. We are seeing some glimmers of improvements as a result of the advocacy work that we do. But we're gonna stay at it until things get better because they just aren't good enough yet.

Gordon Sheppard (02:08.814)
Getting a quick look at your LinkedIn profile before I got here, there's another 10 outstanding individual podcast episodes about all those experiences in your leadership growth, all those different titles, director, the way you've led organizations for multi, for more than a decade at some, and then some are shorter. How lucky to have you here again for the leaders that are listening to the podcast that can learn from you. But currently in your role as CEO for Junior Achievement, that's what we're here to talk about today. So if you had to describe one of your biggest wins in kind of that role at this time,

What would it be and how would you describe it?

Cheryll Watson (02:42.196)
Junior Achievement is a 60 year old organization. So it's been around for a long time. It has an incredible brand reputation. It's got a number of thousands of supporters in the community. But the win that I'm seeing right now is that Junior Achievement is gaining in relevancy and importance. while that's wonderful, it's unfortunate because the reason that we are gaining in demand is because

in Canada, we have a crisis, I would say. We have 100,000 less entrepreneurs than we did 20 years ago, so entrepreneurship is declining in this country. That's a problem. are, know, entrepreneurs are the wealth creators and the job creators. And so the second thing is that we are seeing more and more people rely on social services. And that's just so unfortunate because it robs...

people of opportunity and contributions. so, you know, Junior Achievement is the remedy to that. And people really recognize the critical role that we play delivering financial literacy, education, entrepreneurship, education, and then work readiness programs that really open students' eyes to the opportunity. You know, if you ask a young person right now what they want to be when they grow up, there's, you know, five common answers.

And yet we know there are millions and billions of jobs, different types of jobs out there. And so we really take that seriously to open the door and open their eyes to those opportunities. So that's the win. That's the win is really uplifting junior achievement and providing more access.

Gordon Sheppard (04:27.864)
Fantastic, at a critical moment in time when we see our demographics not going in the right direction, when we see our social issues on the rise, and then these young leaders that you're helping to kind of make aware, and they're part of the supply chain as they come into entrepreneurship, you're a spark with all your different programming and you're able to help them do that. Just for fun, for me, do you have like a, you don't even have to name the name, you can make up a name, but like a first name of someone who's come through one of your programs that kind of makes you smile.

or one of your programs, like one of those moments, can maybe put a bit of brass tacks on it. Go ahead.

Cheryll Watson (05:00.99)
Well, I'm smiling because last night we did our JA pitch competition and this is like a Dragon's Den type event for these young entrepreneurs. There are 250 young people that are participating in that after school program and so I would say probably about 100 of them were out last night. They were selling their wares and they were promoting their company. So I smile because I could name.

you know, 20 or 50 of those young people that I have a relationship with or know by name. I'll tell you one young man, his name is Ritesh and I met him last year. He was out on the South Side at Community Futures at that location. Very young, eager young man who immediately came up and introduced himself to me. I believe he was head of sales last year was his role.

Now, flash forward to this year, second year in the program. He's the CEO of that company this year. He participates at the Fountain Tire Company Program location. Every time I see Ritesh, he is just so effusive in his gratitude for junior achievement because of the opportunities that it has presented to him.

Gordon Sheppard (06:22.318)
That really, I love your genuine smile in there, you in terms of the way it really brings things to life. And we can see now, you know, a direct impact. We have our overview, we have a direct impact. We have all those young entrepreneurs, again, even that handful that you're talking about that are gonna make a big, big difference, moving all those other issues forward. At this moment in time, I love to take the wins and kind of break them down with what I call the anatomy of a win. So when I talk about the strategy, the work plan, the people, the operations and results behind a win.

So if you had to describe highlights from the strategy about why you're getting this win with Junior Achievement at this time, is it the vision? Is it the mission? Is it the goals? Which piece of the strategy do you like to pull out and say, this is why this win happens?

Cheryll Watson (07:06.27)
So the vision and the mission of Junior Achievement is a global one. And so the vision is really to prepare young people for a global economy. And the mission is the role that we play in providing the programming. The unique aspect in what is allowing or enabling or accelerating this win is the mentorship aspect that we bring to the programming.

So junior achievement has its roots. In 1919, it was created by entrepreneurs that saw a problem, and that was that people were graduating without these core economics understanding, and they also didn't think anyone was teaching anyone to be entrepreneurs. So they founded the organization. They were the ones that going into the classroom. That core component remains today is that business people are at the heart of this. so when students...

The students don't just learn curriculum or programs or philosophies, whatever you might want to say. They learn from other people's experience. So when I'm in front of students, I get very vulnerable. I'm very open with my tough beginnings and the things that I learned through failure. And that's what really helps these young people to.

thrive and to succeed. It's that business aspect, business mentor aspect.

Gordon Sheppard (08:36.462)
Well, you're taking me right to that moment when you're in the room with those people and you're just one of thousands of entrepreneurs who are ahead, giving back, giving a hand up to these young people with that real lived experience. What a great soup mix for helping to develop that next generation of entrepreneurs. So that's sort of part of the strategy and a through line all the way back to the very origins of the organization. Amazing to have any organization have that kind of continuity.

Over that length of time. That's pretty remarkable that that still stands strong here today. So we got the strategy There's always a work plan to make a strategy occur It's kind of brass tacks and if we put out a timeline I don't know that we need to draw the timeline from 1919 but in the last couple years if we had to pick highlights out of your timeline about why you know This win is occurring any highlights along the way you mentioned the Dragons Den Thing along the way. Are there any moments that you want to sort of maybe highlight that move that strategy forward?

Cheryll Watson (09:06.164)
agree.

Cheryll Watson (09:28.692)
So I've only been here for a year and a half. So I only have my own short personal experience. But I'll tell you one important win was that I'm proud of. So Junior Achievement for decades here in this province has been hosting the Alberta Business Hall of Fame. And this is such a meaningful event. It really recognizes those that have gone before.

the leaders in this community that have left a legacy and a stamp on Edmonton and the broader region. And so this gala happens every year. It brings out nearly a thousand of prestigious business leaders. And along the way, the timing, the seasonal timing of this event was changed to October. And what happened by doing that is then

The student component of the event, bringing along those young entrepreneurs with their wares to promote their products at this event, those companies are dissolved by that time. So what was a really important aspect of this event, the awards gala, was missing the other important aspect of this event was these young people and the role that Junior Achievement plays in their lives to help them become...

you know, perhaps decades from now recognized at the Hall of Fame. So we lost our way, I think, in for disconnecting the work that we do from a gala. So my poor team, know, here I'm a brand new CEO. I go to my very first gala, my first month in in October, and I say something's missing from this, didn't we used to have kids here, these company program entrepreneurs, and they said, well, those groups end at the end of June.

And so I said to my team, moving this event back to June. And so my poor team, my incredible team though, did two of these galas in one calendar year. They're a huge effort. It's a massive endeavor that they take on. And so they did one in October and they did one in June.

Gordon Sheppard (11:43.614)
I love the firmness in doing the right thing in your role as a leader, right? There's that thing of coming in and knowing, and I'm gonna guess you've done that multiple times in multiple environments from a leadership perspective over time, but that's something the audience can really glob onto is simply the way you set it in a firm way. It's not a negative thing. It's just gonna take some work to get it to be in the right shape.

to move that strategy forward. What a great example in the work plan is sort of making something actually shift to get a good result. If we got the strategy in the work plan, we always need people to pull things off. You mentioned your team. Like if you're gonna pull off like that big moment, for example, and there's yourself, who are some of the key players and how would you describe their attitudes?

Cheryll Watson (12:27.856)
We have a small but mighty team here. I have 10 people on my team. I'm the 11th. And they all first show up with a strong commitment to the kids that we serve. And we start every Monday morning team meeting with a mission moment where somebody on the team shares an experience that they've had with one of our students, with the rest of the team, so that we can all feel the emotion and impact of our work.

We worked together as a team to create an employee value proposition shortly after I joined, where I really wanted to collectively create the type of environment that we all wanted to work within. And so I'm looking at it on the wall. It says at Junior Achievement Northern Alberta, we promise the work that you do will change lives.

That's what they all believe that they are here to do. They recognize that junior achievement is a life interrupter for many of our students where they might be on one path and we help them to move to another. Some of the other promises that we have made collectively to each other is that, you know, we're going to be passionate, we're going to be collaborative, we're going to be impactful in all that we do.

that we are, I'm just reading this off the wall, caring, engaged and supportive of each other and that we are hardworking, driven and we like to have fun. And the employee value proposition hangs on our wall. We talk about it all the time. We unpack these behaviors and practices in all of our team meetings. And I think that that really speaks to why we are able to provide 42,000 learning.

experiences every year with 10 people doing the work.

Gordon Sheppard (14:18.616)
That's a pretty good ratio of sort of one to many in terms of your small team making that big impact. It's one thing to come in, like you said, as a senior leader into an organization, you got your year and a half under your belt. You kind of have a good sense from your leadership skills, but then you have to adapt and do these things. You've changed a major event, that kind of moved for the right reasons. And then you've got this employee value proposition that you've explained. In early days, are they all excited about you being there making these changes? Or what was the evolution like as you brought in the employee value proposition, for example?

Cheryll Watson (14:49.79)
We spend a lot of time together as a team while we do different work. Our team is kind of split in half. We have a small team that does direct program delivery, recruitment of volunteers, and then we have the other half of the team that does fundraising, stakeholder engagement, partner engagement. And so while the days look different and we do...

commit to come together once a week. spend time and we also have fun together. So once a week we do something social. from the way that we they engage, we all engage together. I think that they think I'm doing a good job.

Gordon Sheppard (15:29.41)
That's fantastic. Honestly, sounds and I'm going to pick up on a couple of words. You've mentioned the word emotion a couple of times. It really speaks to your leadership style. You mentioned vulnerability that when you're mentoring, how unique to be in. I'm going to say what it takes a while. I'm going to say to be confident publicly with that type of approach. I would think, or have you always had that kind of approach to doing your leadership work?

Cheryll Watson (15:52.216)
I've been in a number of public roles and the first time that I got the most public attention was through a pretty big major failure and I took a lot of barbs, was under great scrutiny and I had a lot of negative community reaction to some of the things that I was doing and

You know, those are tough times to be in a public role and to be in a situation where your work, people think you're heading in the wrong direction or making bad decisions. So I think that when you have that type of exposure in a situation like that, it makes you pretty comfortable moving forward to be vulnerable and to be really open then with sharing your learnings in that situation with others.

Gordon Sheppard (16:51.64)
Thank you. That is a great gift for anybody. People could stop the podcast right there and simply rewind that last minute and take advantage. It's not Brene Brown sitting in front of me right now. Do you know what I mean? This is Cheryll Watson bringing her chops to the situation, making things happen. And I just really appreciate the way you've explained that so thoroughly so that other people again can learn from it and take that on. That's just wonderful living example. We've got the strategy, the work plan, the people. There's operationally, you got to make things happen. Now you mentioned

There's some logistics to things. You move things around. And when I talk about operations, you never know. It can be regulatory. can be, I don't know, systems internally, processes, those types of things. Any operational highlights that you think are contributing to getting that, I'm going to say, 42,000 learning opportunities out per year?

Cheryll Watson (17:38.036)
Absolutely. So one of the gifts that I bring to this role and to this organization is some of the experience that I gained at a wonderful company called Intuit, makers of QuickBooks and TurboTax. I spent 15 years working for that organization and Intuit was well known for a few things. Number one, its commitment to customers, but number two, its leadership development practices.

So I learned so many incredible constructs frameworks that I share with the team here today about, you know, number one, what is the outcome that we are trying to accomplish or achieve with some of this work and really being laser focused then on making sure that your work is going to drive that outcome. And so that's something that we talk about a lot here. I'm very, very focused on

you know, customer experience back to talking about Intuit was really well recognized for that. So we talk a lot about our different, the participants in our program. So students, what is the student experience? What is the teacher experience? What is the volunteer experience? So we're really focused on experience. I wouldn't say that we are nailing it or a hundred percent on these areas yet, cause there's early work, but it's something.

that I share with my team about creating a journey line of an experience. And so that's something that I'm really, I know that the team and I are really excited about. The other framework or last thing I'll leave you with, Gordon, sorry, I you're trying to interrupt me here. being a blabbermouth. Is this idea that feedback is a gift. And so that is, we use a framework that we...

use either to give each other personal feedback in a situation or after an event. So, you know, what worked, what was tricky, what do you want to do differently? And so that's something that we practice as well.

Gordon Sheppard (19:47.16)
Blabbermouth, not at all. I was jumping in excitedly to say, my goodness, how lucky that you're helping entrepreneurs and you're talking about customer experience and outcomes. I mean, that is just so missed. I can guarantee you down the supply chain of entrepreneurs. So the fact that you've got it in continuity within your organization and you're radiating that out, that's outstanding. And then you've got this framework for interacting with your staff, which helps you to strengthen the team. Is that fair, that framework? How would you describe the impact of that framework?

Cheryll Watson (20:16.148)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, one thing I want to just correct, say I don't want to be falsely describing myself or presenting myself. I'm not an entrepreneur. I've been an intrapreneur. I've only ever worked for large organizations. I've worked for two Fortune 500 companies. But throughout my entire journey line, I have supported entrepreneurs in one way or the other.

Gordon Sheppard (20:41.494)
Interesting. remember a professor at MBA saying the very same thing. He taught entrepreneurship and that was almost a disclaimer at the front of the course. He said, listen, I haven't done it, but, and then he started to name all the entrepreneurs that he've worked with over the years. And you just couldn't help but get into that pedigree because he had sort of been there, done that in those rooms, doing in his case, the heavy research, the heavy lifting along the way. You would have, I'm sure, dozens of stories of the entrepreneurs that you support along your way. So that's interesting in terms of that perspective that you bring.

I'm sure it's very valuable as you move things forward. We talked about strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results when you have a win. So qualitative, quantitative. You you said a quantitative one. We're delivering these 42,000 learning experiences. Congratulations with your small team. That's amazing. Any other quantitative or qualitative results that you'd like to sort of talk about with a win like this?

Cheryll Watson (21:30.868)
We have a number. So we have a dashboard that we use to assess the health of our organization. Everyone knows that a dashboard is like the dashboard of your car. And so red light, green light are there parts of your business that need attention or don't need attention. So some of the KPIs, additional KPIs on our dashboard would be things like the conversion of a volunteer from orientation to teaching.

from teaching one class to teaching multiple classes. We also measure our net promoter score with our teachers, with our volunteers. We measure things like new donors and value of contribution or donation. We measure things like visitors to our website. So there are a number of different KPIs that we use to assess the work we're doing.

Gordon Sheppard (22:29.72)
I love it. some of them, it takes time to get to that. I mean, you're rolling that list off pretty easily, but I'm gonna say in nonprofit settings generally, the ones that I've seen, they don't have it to that level of sophistication, which again, speaks well to the data points that you're gonna need along the way as we move into our AI worlds. It's inevitable, but the fact that you'll be loaded for bear with some of these things along the way, like, by the way, I like the nuance of.

we met somebody, then we introduced them to the organization, then they mentored for us, and then they taught for us. That's a really interesting, you can hear that timeline that you talked about earlier when you're breaking things down to find those real value points that are kind of in there as well. NPS, just for folks that don't know, what is the Net Promoter Score? And again, just maybe give an example in your world.

Cheryll Watson (23:15.496)
The concept of the net promoter score really speaks to the fact that if you have delighted customers, they will publicly promote you. my, went out for dinner last night, had the best meal, so they'll talk about you all the time. On the other scale, if you disappoint someone in your experience, there's a larger range of those people that will actually go out of their way to talk negatively.

We've all done this. I was in, you know, whatever store and this happened. So the concept is you ask this very simple question of the people that have an experience with you. Would you promote or recommend junior achievement to another teacher? Would you promote junior achievement as a volunteer experience to another friend? And so they rate you on a scale of zero to 10. 10 being highly, like I would absolutely recommend you and zero being absolutely not. And so then there's a

mathematical calculation of some people aren't counted and then this minus that and that gives you a net promoter score. But you know the basic concept is that that people that you really delight will talk about you.

Gordon Sheppard (24:25.516)
And you would have certain educational moments along the way where the net promoter score, as you said, were evolving. Some of them might be whatever mixed, but then you've got some other ones where I'm gonna, I'm hoping you're hitting it out of the park. Is that fair?

Cheryll Watson (24:35.976)
We have incredibly high Net Promoter scores in our teachers and our volunteers.

Gordon Sheppard (24:41.186)
And that's such a legitimate way to evaluate. And again, I think for the folks that aren't aware of Net Promoter Score, they know that you're using it, and it's a great legitimate way to kind of go about things. That's great. On the qualitative side, I mean, how satisfying is it for you to go into work?

Cheryll Watson (24:57.778)
best times are when you spend with students. I, well, I'm with my staff too. So the majority of my job is, you know, leading the team and that's amazing and so rewarding. I look forward to coming to work every single Monday morning and every day. And, you know, I also get to speak to a lot of supporters, donors, our Hall of Fame inductees, Board of Governors, and everyone in our Champions of Junior Achievement. So that's so incredibly rewarding.

But it is the students that make this work all worthwhile is when you run into a retish who is just so delighted and and overwhelmed with how this has changed his life and he sees being able to change his life in the future. I've had a lot of great roles. I'm just going to say, you know, I've done some pretty neat things. I talked to you about that. I've worked for a couple of Fortune 500 companies. I've worked all around the world. I worked for the Economic Development Organization around for mayor.

But this is the best, all of those experiences led to this role and this is the best job I've had in my life.

Gordon Sheppard (26:04.622)
couldn't sort of conclude any better. I've seen you in action, working a room and how everywhere you are. And you can hear now with all that experience, you choose to be here at this time. We've heard in spades why you're here and how you're contributing along with your team to getting those wins out the door. Cheryll, it's been a pleasure having you on. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Cheryll Watson (26:28.198)
Entirely my pleasure. Thank you very much. Have a fantastic weekend.