Ep. 615 - Canon U.S.A. EVP Peter Kowalczuk - Make Your Boss Look Good

0:00I think a lot of people, as they transition from one job to another job, or as they move up the ladder, feel that they've made it. Well, the world changes on the dime, and you have to be ready for anything that changes. And you have to be ready to adjust how you're going to go and adjust yourself, how you're going to adjust your company to react. I mean, when you think about COVID, if anyone thought they were ever going to experience COVID, they're lying. And everyone reacted differently.

0:29Welcome to the Second in Command podcast, produced by the COO Alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the Second in Command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies, and tactics that made them the chiefs behind the chief. And now, here's your co-host, experience-driven growth strategist, former chief strategy officer, and author of No One Needs Another Company Mug, Lindsay Smith. Our guest today is Peter Qualtech. He is the COO, executive vice president, and client services group president for Canon USA. He is also the chairman and CEO of Canon Business Process Services.

1:12Peter began his career with Canon in 1984, rising through numerous executive roles to become president of Canon Solutions America in 2018. In 2023, he took on dual responsibilities when he was appointed chairman and CEO of Canon Business Process Services. Following the August 2024 merger of Canon Solutions America into its parent company, his presidential role transitioned to executive vice president and client services group president of Canon USA, Inc. a dual leadership position he continues to hold today. Additionally, as of January 2026, he took on a pivotal role as a key leader, driving the newly formed Canon America's production print team, guiding a focused strategy to deliver advanced technology and streamline support to markets across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America.

2:02Throughout his tenure, Mr. Kwalchek has cultivated a client-first culture, deeply rooted in driving customer success through determination, innovation, and collaboration. With decades of industry experience, he offers valuable insights to help ensure customers will achieve optimized productivity through customized solutions that meet their specific needs. His inherent commitment to creating an environment marketed by a prevailing spirit of collaboration and trust underscores his focus on putting clients' goals first. Mr. Qualchuk's leadership abilities have established a strong corporate culture centered on enhancing productivity and sustainability for businesses of all sizes in all industries.

2:49His vision creates value for customers, not just through hardware, but also through software, managed print services, professional services, and business optimization. With a keen eye on the latest technology and industry advancements, he provides expert guidance in connecting with customers and working closely with them to support streamlined performance. His longstanding commitment to fostering the growth and advancement of Canon customers combined with his extensive leadership experience brings a unique perspective to the executive teams of Canon USA and Canon Business Process Services. I am so excited to welcome Peter to our show.

3:30Well, thank you, Lindsay. Looking forward to it. So I would love to just really dig on in and talk to our listeners about who Peter is and how Peter ended up as the COO of Canon. Well, it's a long story. Right. We've got all the time in the world. All the time in the world. No, I've actually started my career with a small subsidiary of Canon way back, 1984. I was a salesperson, so I started out in sales. and I've always had a desire from the beginning to get into leadership. And so I started my journey in sales as a salesperson, then I proceeded to get into leadership positions within sales. And as it kept on growing, I kept on adding more titles, more regions, more than became a national senior VP of sales for our organization and so on.

4:28So that's how I began my career. And throughout that whole career, it was very focused on sales. And then Canon started to evolve. And really, Canon predominantly was a wholesale organization that did great research and development, had great consumer products and camera and print and so on. And then the direct business, the B2B side of the business started growing. and they decided to consolidate and to create a new division within the organization that's focused on B2B sales and service and support for our customers. In corporate America, they use copiers at that point, now multifunctional devices, printers to really conduct their business, to print, right?

5:22But now the products do so much more than they have in the past. they really kind of fulfilled a lot of things for those for those customers but so we consolidated we brought all the organizations that were throughout the country into one group called Canon Business Solutions and that organization was brought together I was a senior VP of sales in that at that time then then we consolidated and we bought a company called OSE, Cannon bought a company called OSE. We took a lot of time merging our organizations together. That's really where I started to probably jump into more of the general leadership role, more of the operations side of it.

6:13I had a lot, always had sales. I always have sales under my umbrella. But at that point, when we had to merge two organizations together, it was, how do we really put everything together? Not only sales, but service operations, back office operations together. And that's really where I kind of was able to transcend and make my move into more of a general sales leadership or services leadership, operations leadership role at that point. And, you know, I was very lucky to always have good mentors. And at that point, I had an excellent mentor, a Japanese gentleman called Toyo. And he really kind of took me under his wing.

7:03So although I didn't have a second in command role at that point, yet he was prepping me, right? He was positioning me for that type of role. He was positioning me to take over his role. And that's how it all kind of came together and kind of built up. But that transition when we merged OSA with Canon Direct Operations is really where I transitioned into more of an operations side of the business. So let me just be clear here, You've been with Canonor's subsidiary of Canon since 1984? I have. That's impressive. You don't hear of that much in today's market. Kudos to you. I've been very fortunate.

7:49Every time I've had a chance to look at things and so on, I've been recognized by my superiors for having the skills and the ability and the want to be successful at the company. and they've given me chances. So, you know, you know, a lot of times people kind of fall through the cracks. I always focused on making sure the folks I worked for, you know, I always had a philosophy and I've, I've talked to talk to my children. I've talked to new leaders within our organization. My philosophy has always been, you have to make the person you report to look really good. And if you make them look really good, they'll reach back and pull you with them.

8:32And And that's really kind of what happened for me is that they've reached back and they've like, I need you on my team. I need you on my team. I need you on my team. And so that philosophy, you know, has worked out very well for me. And, yeah, since 1984 and still going strong. That's incredible. And it takes a very specific mindset to move from a true sales position into a leadership position. because as you know, not all people who are great at a specific technical skill are able to move into that leadership, you know, capability. We take our best X player and make them a leader and they don't always have the tools.

9:10What did you do to make sure you were ready for that? Um, you know, it's, it's, there's not, it's, it's practical stuff. I, uh, going back to, uh, going back to, you know, I went to a state school, I went to Northern Illinois University, but they had a sales program there. But the professors that taught that program not only were sales, but the guy that ran the whole program brought in accounting and he brought in other facets of business management into his program. And they really focused on making sure that we utilized all the details we can about our organization, about the products, about how our organization supports you to be a better salesperson.

9:56Well, I learned back then that it takes the whole team. It's not just a great product. It does take a whole team. So I was always able to kind of look at that and work through that philosophy. And the other thing that, you know, it's a simple thing, but the other thing that the professors at that point, the key professor said to me, always, always be open to learning. Always keep, keep reading, keep reading, you know, at that point in books and magazines. Now it's podcasts like yours and listening and always educating yourself, listening to what other leaders are saying, how they did it, learn through their mistakes.

10:40And that's how I did it. I just transitioned by really focusing on always keeping myself up on all the news, you know, reading Wall Street Journal, reading Business Week, reading periodicals, talking, and now I listen to a ton of podcasts and love podcasts like this one and so on, where you're really hearing from other leadership what they went through. It's not easy. You have to invest in yourself. I think a lot of people, as they transition from one job to another job or as they move up the ladder feel that they're they've made it well you know the world changes on the dime and you have to be ready for anything that changes and you have to be ready to adjust adjust how you're going to go and adjust yourself how you're going to adjust your company to react i mean you think about you know covid anyone anyone thought of thought they were ever going to experience COVID, they're lying.

11:45And everyone reacted differently. And I think we reacted as best as we could. We had a brand new CEO at that point. And he took a very, you know, very, very good fundamental look at how we're supposed to take care of our people, how we have to deal with our customers to do the best things we can. And we got through it. It wasn't anything, super out of the ordinary, but it was very practical thinking and really understanding the relationships you have with your customers, listening to them, listening to your employees, and dealing with it and getting through to the next side. So the transition was really very practical, always staying on top of the news, listening, learning, constantly learning, and understanding what it takes to become a leader and stay there.

12:35One of the tools that Cameron Harreld built was an Invest in Your Leaders program. And it's very practical, like you're talking about. And when I was in corporate America, I had my team run through it because they learned the practical things that they thought they already knew or that they didn't think that they needed to invest in because they already were leaders. And so I think it's great just to continue to invest in yourself and to focus on ways that you can become better. Is there a favorite book of yours that you've read? that's given you some guidance? I've read so many books. I actually have a, Who Moved My Cheese Right on My Desk?

13:12I pulled that one out again. It had nothing to do with this call. I just like, you know, looking at, I have a whole library of books behind me that I've read. I've read so many different books at different times. So to name one, I'd be hard-pressed, which one's better. but you could you could go on on any you go on audible you could go on amazon you could go to your barnes and noble go to the business section do yourself a favor pull a book yeah pull a book about leadership just pull a book and and read through it and understand it and then read the read the preamble to the book of who that author is looking at who they who they look for who they look and use as mentors, then read something that they did or look at them up on the internet now and see if there's a podcast about them and listen to what they have to say.

14:09So there's so many out there. You just start. The biggest issue is just start. I think a lot of people get very focused on their day-to-day business. It's really easy to get focused on day-to-day business. It's really easy to get then say, okay, I'm exhausted. I'm just going to go and do stuff with my family, take a half hour a day, read. Read something, listen to the podcast. I walk a lot. I walk every day. I listen to podcasts, you know, for three to four, five miles a day. I listen to a podcast. That's my time. I learn something new. The only thing bad about podcasts is you don't get to highlight them.

14:46I used to always like highlighting everything in yellow. I can't highlight a podcast. Well, the reality is with all the different books and all the different podcasts, you're getting different opinions and perspectives. And it might not be something that you necessarily agree with or something that you adapt in your business, but now you've heard it. And then you can use that to make your own decisions. I completely agree because I will tell you my, the very first job I had at Cannon, the guy that was running the organization, I literally mentally took note. I will do everything opposite of what this man is doing.

15:22I will, I will, I will conscientiously make sure I don't do what this man is doing. I mean, I was able to succeed within his environment, but it was a terrible environment, a toxic environment. And we have to kind of, we have to be successful despite him. And, and I always took, so I took to your point, I took not only the good, but I took the bad and said, don't do that and be very conscientious not to do that because I saw the ramifications that it has on people. And not everyone is, you know, I'm just kind of a dumb guy. I'm just strong-willed and I just put my blinders on, but not everyone's like that.

16:04And you have to create an environment where everyone could succeed, not just a few. What was the best part of your relationship with your mentor? Um, the best part of my relationship is that, that he would challenge me. But after a while, we built a trust with each other that I could challenge him and we could have good, open discussions, um, about business and how we're doing things. And, you know, he would never, he would not always agree with me. We really, we really came from different directions. I came from sales. He always came from an admin operations side of the business. They look at, they look at things completely different than salespeople do.

16:53So we had to build a common ground, but, but it was, but we were able to build that common ground because we had great, we, we built a trust with each other. And, and that not only helped me with him, but it also taught me the value of building trust with my direct reports and allowing them to be able to make mistakes. He allowed me to make mistakes. He just says, you own them though. You own them. You got to correct it. If you make a mistake, you got to correct it. You got to fix it. And so because of that trust, I was able to, I was able to fly. I was able to make some decisions and, you know, as time went on, he allowed, you know, he allowed that rope to go out further and further and further to, to give me more, more control and give me more decision-making authority.

17:54But it, but it didn't start that way. It took, it took time and trust. He challenged me and I challenged my direct reports too. So I learned a lot from that. Just challenge me, people don't just accept it because you like the person that reports to you and they've done a good job in the past, you know a new challenge is a new challenge make sure that they're they they fully comprehend it he he tested me just to make sure I had all my my eyes dotted and my t's crossed make sure I had all the details I thought through all the all the different things that could happen and I was prepared I was prepared for things to challenge me so let's talk about your direct reports every second in command, their frontline, the people that report to them varies from organization to organization.

18:42What does it look like for you? So the folks that report to me, you know, I've actually kind of run two different organizations within Canon now. I won the industrial printing division for Canon, which goes from Canada through Latin America. That's mostly, you know, sales and sales operations side. They'll run another subsidiary, which is a BPO subsidiary that's, you know, people working within other customers' offices. I have a full-blown operation there. So I have very senior leaders that come to the table and work for me. I'm also on the executive leadership team of Canon USA, Canon Americas.

19:29So we're involved with all the decisions and the day-to-day operations that have to be done, you know, key decisions and forward-thinking process. So, you know, at this point, I have very senior leaders that have a lot of good experience, a lot of experience that are out there, but also working within a multicultural corporation like Canon. So we're owned by the Japanese. Our head office is in Japan. Canon Americas is run by a Japanese CEO. I've been involved with Japanese leadership my whole career. So you're working both sides, right? You got the American culture, you got the Japanese culture, you have to kind of work through both cultures.

20:18So, you know, it gets a little challenging at times, but the good thing is everyone has one focus and that's making our company the best and if everyone has the same same motivation same theme you could take very senior leadership and and making sure that they're they're all focused on the same goal and that's what we're that's what we're all about so although i have very senior leadership i challenge them i challenge them to become better i challenge them because as as you could easily denote from the date i started my career that the timeline is the timeline is ending at some point. There is a timeline there, right?

20:59At some point. So my challenge now is to build a succession plan and make sure that the next group that could take over and take the mantle to a new level. We've done a good job, but I think there's some people that could probably take the mantle to a new level because they think of things differently. They look at business differently a little bit, but, you know, challenging them to take on the next level in the future. Are you constantly looking and thinking like, oh, this person might be a good successor in this role or in this space? Yes. It really is because, again, you know, as we change, as the business world changes, I mean, you know, so, you know, we're very focused on, you know, in the B2B side of the business on print in the corporate offices.

21:53Well, you know, hybrid workforce, print is not, print is not as robust as it was pre-COVID. So how do we pivot? How do we, how do we maintain the number one position? How do we do that? Well, that means we have to become, we have to become more than just print. We have to get into solutions. We have to get into other services and we have to expand those, those opportunities to, to drive that business. You know, we're making huge investments in industrial production print. And, you know, what does that mean? How do we, how do we garner the number one, continue to garner the number one position in that piece of the business that we're doing and monetize all the investment that Canon is doing as an R &D company into that space?

22:38Well, that means you're changing your organization a lot, right? You're moving folks around. You're challenging them to do different types of jobs, but you're also looking outside to bring in new talent that can fulfill information that we don't have currently. Yeah, we're moving into new areas of industrial print and label and packaging. We don't have any skill set today in those areas. So by virtue of that, we need to build up that organization. And there are a few people that know that business that we could use that are currently on staff. But then otherwise, we need to bring in new people.

23:20And then you have to bring them into our culture, right? They have to fit our culture, which is also an interesting one, especially when you're bringing someone a little bit senior. You have to bring someone in. We just did that in my business process outsourcing company. We brought in a couple of new people in senior leadership roles as retirements hit. And it's different, right? You have to get them involved in it. They bring in new ideas. They bring in new structure that they want to invent. and you have to let them do it, right? You have to let them run. How has the culture within Canon changed since you've been there?

24:02Oh, gosh. You know, the good news by working for a Japanese company is they have a very stable culture. They have a very consistent culture that's part of their overall culture. And by virtue of that, We had a longstanding CEO that was here for quite a long time. He had a position. The next CEO, who's now one of the heir apparent to run the overall Canon Inc., was also kind of out of that same cloth. They have a very conscientious system. They don't make rash decisions, which is probably one of the reasons Canon has been so successful. They have a very focused business plan. They have a long-term business plan.

24:50And by virtue of that, we're able to accomplish things that other companies may react differently if something slips a little bit. Canon has a long-term vision, and by virtue of that, it's been very consistent. So then going back to the culture, it's been much more consistent than I've talked to my friends and other people in other companies that have seen a lot of changes, quick changes to culture and things like that. We've been very consistent in our culture, and that has helped us. one of the things that we did do though is i ran a subsidiary another subsidiary for for canon for quite a long time and when this new ceo came in his thing was hey look we want to bring everybody together so i had to you know i was the i was the president of that organization and we were independent and now i brought him into the main corporation so i had to convince people that the culture was going to remain the same.

25:56It's all good for everybody. And we had to make sure we got everything in line to merge 5 ,000 people into the mothership, into Canada and USA. And that wasn't easy. It took a lot of work, but it worked out. And that gave us a lot of opportunities. And again, that's some of the things that the CEOs that I've worked for have been able to lean on me, you know, to say, hey, this is what I'd like you to do. I know it's a behemoth change, but figure it out. Right. Figure it out. Number, number two gets to figure it out. Go figure it out. Absolutely. Number one has these ideas and then says, all right, number two, you, you go.

26:41Go figure it out. You know, and that's, but, you know, we have a lot of great leadership. We have a lot of great, uh, a lot of great people that work that I'm able to tap on and work with, um, and a lot of great support. So when that happens, you know, you're not by yourself. Um, you're not, um, you're, you're, you're not a person on the island by yourself. And I think that's the key thing to our culture is that in the end, everyone understands their role. Everyone understands what our common, the common theme is, is, is really to keep Canon Inc. growing, moving in the right direction. You know, the Kyose culture of Canon, of giving back to the community plays, you know, that's, I mean, you're talking about long-term culture that plays into giving back to the community, giving back to its employees, giving back to nature.

27:36and that's all it makes it easier to to to build a culture when you have that type of long-term philosophy starting all the way from the top and being lived by the top right being lived from the top down and and again just staying very focused on long-term goals makes it a little bit easier in roles like mine to make a mistake and to rebound because you're not sitting there going, okay, if I make a mistake, everything's over, right? And because of that, you know, Canada is very deeply rooted financially. You know, we were able to be very diverse in products and so on. So from that perspective, it gives us a lot of opportunity to fly.

28:26I mean, during COVID, It was the cameras and printers, personal printers that did a great job. Our division, B2B, no one was working. It was tough. But because we're so diverse, we were able to weather the storm. Right, and remain in the top. When you say, Peter, that the company is committed to giving back to the communities and to the employees, and what does that mean and look like? Well, we do a lot of small things, very much working with communities, working with schools. We work with a lot of schools. One of the programs we do is future authors. There was an English teacher that had this great idea that she was going to create a classroom of high schoolers to write a book.

29:21you know and every year she's been writing a book well who who better than somebody like canon to print the book and to provide cameras to do photography for the book and so we partnered with them and we've now created a book every year with that school district well we we did that and then we said okay well what are we going to do we do we did that same thing with us with school districts in florida then we said okay well maybe this could work in a university level which customer which university customers of ours can we pitch this to and what what can we do so we did we did it with university of alabama and we did the you know we did it about minors in appalachia and you know we did those types of things and we're giving so we're giving back to students you know we get a lot of universities that are customers of ours asking us for um money for athletics and we're like we like we like to give invest back into your educational side so So, you know, Arizona State University, being a sales guy, we invested with them and, you know, we participate in their sales contest.

30:29We sponsor their sales contest. I go, you know, I've gone there myself and judged salespeople and so on. We built a curriculum for a school district down in Texas to help kids that don't want to go to college, right? There's a lot of kids that don't want to go to college. What can we do to help those kids? And we work with that vocational school in that school district to help do that. So we do a lot of those types of things out here on Long Island. We we participate with various communities where we're headquartered on Long Island. That's where I bring up Long Island. We're headquartered in Melville, Long Island.

31:05We do a lot of with the local communities, obviously being a corporate headquarters. We do a lot with that. We do a lot with the nature. um seacrest foundation i don't know if you know anything about the seacrest foundation you know mr seacrest but he created a foundation where he's created studios within children's hospitals and we've participated we've partnered with him and his sister uh to provide cameras uh studio equipment for them uh to do that and if you talk to these children you know they're they're in these children's hospitals and some of them are there for months and that those studios give them something back and allow them to participate and learn so i think that's how we give back to the community those are just a few of the examples of how we give back to the community but what it does it also engages our employees in each of these projects that i'm talking about it's not just leadership it's our employees that are now participating and giving back and and working with them we have we we have various universities that are involved with graphic arts and industrial print we work with them we have a big we have a big um customer event we bring you know we bring in students to that customer event so they meet other professionals they meet other clients of ours so that in the future they can build a relationship, get jobs out there in the industry.

32:36So those are how we give back. It's not always writing that big check. It's nice to write a big check, but you don't always have to write a big check. It's actually getting engaged, mentoring these students, getting involved with them. Maya Angelou said, people will not remember what you did or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel or some variation of that. And I think that your give back programs, you know, think about as being a student who just has the feeling of publishing a book or a student who is in a school and is learning how to do sales and has somebody from corporate America saying you did good, right?

33:17Like those are feelings that you can't really write a check to recreate. You can't write a check to recreate. And, you know, when I first went to the high school here on long island and it wasn't just the kids how proud the parents were and how proud the whole community was and and then you see it was this english teacher she's the one that did it we were just cogs in the the whole project but she's the one that had the the the forward thinking of what it can do for these kids and and they got to learn photography they learned how to write They learned how to edit a book. They're published. You know, they're published.

34:00Then the class writes a book every year. Yeah. Yeah, that's incredible. And there's so many things that schools don't teach that you really just need that experience to really master and be able to utilize as you move along in your career. So just I'm just really in awe by all those things. Absolutely. And I think that's the, and frankly, that's the fun part of my job. Yeah. I get, I get to go, you know, I get to go things. People ask, well, aren't you busy? I'm like, yeah, I'm busy, but that's the fun part. I mean, I get to, I get to go out and explore and, and, and, and meet people that I would never, never meet.

34:41I would have, you know, we had an outing at the Yankee stadium with the Seacrest Foundation and I, and I met the kids, right. I walked on the field with the kids and, you know, it was incredible. It was incredible what these kids could do for you. And you feel really, you feel everything is not as important as what they're going through that day. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we talked about the fun things. I want to circle back to when you were tasked with integrating your 5 ,000-person unit and really talk about the strategies that you had to employ and the communication to make sure that there was buy-in and a successful integration.

35:24Sure. So, you know, when you're doing something like that, you have to really make sure you have a plan. Now, mind you, we also pulled it off in six months. Wow. This was not the first time we merged Osei and my subsidiary together. We had three years. This one was a six-month project. He wanted to really challenge me. So it really takes getting the full leadership team together, really breaking down what it means, breaking down all the components of the project constant you have to do constant it's a very practical matter bringing it together but then you have to do constant feedback you have to do constant feedback and communication to the employees because you're bringing two cultures together even though we're owned by canon we were running separate right we were running independent And everyone knew that this was going to be a big change because departments were going to be merged into departments and things like that.

36:33And so you really have to go piece by piece, department by department to bring everything together. But throughout the whole thing, I did town halls. I did communication. I had our CEO do a lot of those communications so he can, you know, it was his vision. You need to communicate your vision. I helped him. Yeah, we helped him provide that guidance and communicate what that vision was and why it was so important to him to merge these organizations together. what he thought would happen on the back end. That's the only way you could get the buy-in because if you get, if your employees believe there is a, there is a success for them, there's an outcome for them that, that they could hang their hat on, they, they buy into it and they're willing to do it.

37:28And so you, you didn't want to make it, you didn't want to make it sound like, yeah, oh my God, we're going to merge it. Then we're going to cut half because that wasn't goal that wasn't the goal the goal was to bring gain efficiency and productivity and really enhance the whole organization taking the skills of a lot of the people that were in our team and enhancing the can in america's team and and really bringing bear to all the products and the consumer products and things like that and really drive that whole business but it took us a lot of you know for lack of better word sales and and and convincing that we weren't draconian and we were gonna have some other um plan there and uh to get the buy-in and probably the first 30 days was a very scary time for many people and then as they heard about it as they saw what what was happening and then the tar started trickling down what we were trying to do, people started getting buy-in and then that helped us get through it quicker.

38:32But it was constant communication. I probably over-communicated, but over-communicating isn't bad. People don't have to listen to every meeting, but they have an opportunity to hear it when they need it. So we over-communicated, but you have to be very detail-oriented. So we broke everything down. we broke everything down we we made sure we over communicated we over communicated to our employees but i think the part that we were missing here is we also i also spent a lot of time with the new leadership that was inheriting a lot of our our team team members okay in making sure that they understood my philosophy because that's what these people were coming from right that's the culture they were coming from so they need to understand some of these people may challenge you.

39:21They're not being mean. They're not trying to challenge you to just challenge you. They actually may have a better idea. And they were always working in an environment that bring up those ideas. We're always looking for change. So it was educating both sides. It was interesting making sure we were educating both sides of the coin, not just our employees. But constant communication was critical. And I think that your background as a sales person really helped because undoubtedly you've had to overcome a lot of objections when you were selling. And so you were able to really help the employees to understand rather than just say, this is what it is.

40:01Yeah. No, it is. You are spot on. It's funny you bring that up because we have a mentor program, right? And every company has mentors. I participate. Of course, when the first time a mentee opens up their email and says, well, your mentor is Pete Kowalski. It's like, oh my God, why am I? But, you know, but I talked to them about that. I said, look, this is your, this is your, this is your project. But throughout the mentorship, I always, I always fall back on the sales, right? Because it doesn't matter if they're coming from HR, it doesn't come out, matter if they're coming from operations, they're coming from serve our service organization, you know, they, as they're trying to aspire to leadership, they need to learn how to make presentations.

40:50They need to know how to, how to close on their idea. A lot of these people that haven't had to do that, just go into a presentation and then assume that everyone's going to say, okay, I vote, I vote and I agree with you. They get challenged and they're freaking out. Right. So, so a lot of, a lot of the background that I do with my mentees is, is little touches of sales to help them become better at growing as a leader. And you don't realize that a lot of things that you have to do when you're sitting in front of a client and try to convince them to spend money with you, you have to do the same thing internally when you're trying to move an organization, especially when you're moving 5 ,000 people or 12 ,000 people.

41:32You have to convince them and you have to fall back on really good, solid communication and handling the objections that they have and being able to answer those objections. What does this formalized mentor-mentee program look like?

41:51HR runs it. They run the program. It's open to a certain level of employee that's trying to become, that either became a leader or wants to become a leader. Of course, we're limited to the number of leaders that want to participate, but most leaders want to participate. And we do a formal, you know, HR does a formal selection process. Mentees volunteer for it. Way back in the beginning, we actually had managers volunteer people for it. That didn't work out because some of them were like, I don't want to be menteed. So we went back to more of a voluntary program, which has worked out much better.

42:37because these people want to be mentees. And then we get matched, you know, based on what they're trying to find out. I'm trying to find out, you know, my leadership skills, or I want to know how to build relationship within the organization or things like that. So, you know, what is the mentee looking for type of thing? And then we kind of marry them together. And throughout the mentor-mentee process, it's not a full year. It's probably about nine months. Okay. During the whole process, then the organization also has networking programs and where we use video and so on throughout the country.

43:20We do networking programs. We have ice cream socials, things like that, just to get people together, get them to talk to other mentors, get them to meet other people. Especially those folks that want to learn how to network better within the organization. Give them the opportunity to network, right? And so it's just a pretty loosely put together program run by HR, but it's really done well for us. Our mentees really enjoy it. And we always have a bigger and bigger group wanting to volunteer for it. So it's good. Well, firsthand, you know what that's like. I mean, you talked in the beginning of our conversation about your mentor that really helped set you up for success.

44:02So I'm sure it feels really good to be able to give back. Yep. Once they get past the fear on who they're talking to. Yeah, you're not scary. You're not scary. I'm not scary, but it's the title. It comes with the title. Well, it's true. And so, you know, thinking about the title, when you were a child, you said you wanted to be in leadership. Did you ever think that you would end up as a CEO of an organization? Was that something you aspired to? No, not really. As a child, no. As my career progressed, I started seeing the opportunity and started to see that, okay, I could do more than where I've been.

44:44uh but as as growing up i i i you know i didn't envision myself that i grew up in a blue collar family my my parents immigrated here in 55 they didn't speak english you know i was you know so i had all that stuff so i never envisioned a corporate job that was never you know that was never part of the game plan i could i didn't have i didn't have someone to look up i looked up to my appearance for a lot of things, but that was not, that wasn't what they were. They were, they just, they just made me a good guy, right. They just, they were to work hard and be a good person. But they never, you know, they didn't envision me in corporate America and things like that.

45:27So I didn't have that, that purview. But once I started in my career and started seeing the opportunities of what, you know, what hard work does, what, you know, building a brand, your own personal brand does it can do for you um i started envisioning that one of you know one of my other little philosophy as i said one of my philosophies is is you know making your boss look good well one way to make your boss look good is a sub sub philosophy is that you have to think about that job so i always i always used to look and say what is the person above me and what's the person above them, what do they do?

46:08And how do I start acting today like them so that when they have to make a decision about who gets promoted, oh, wait a minute, this guy's already doing that. He's already doing things. He already thinks like that job. And so I've always kind of worked through that. I always had to challenge myself to be that. So as I grew through my career, that's when I started envisioning the opportunity that was ahead of me. And I challenged my superiors to give me those opportunities. One of the best pieces of advice that I ever had was in the culture I came from, everything was very, very casual dress. People were not in business attire.

46:56But I was taught early on in my career, dress for the job that you want, not the job that you had. So I would be, you know, 10 times overdressed for where I was knowing what it was that I was moving towards. And I think that that really helped me to gain credibility, but also to gain opportunities that I wouldn't have had necessarily otherwise. Absolutely. You're spot on. You have to dress like the job you want, act like the job you want, think through your daily activities like the job you want. You have to position yourself for that. And, you know, you can always dress down. You know, I used to tell people would say when we were in sales, we wore ties every day.

47:38Well, I'm going to a customer where they're not wearing ties. I said, are you sure? Are you sure? And if they're not, what's the easiest thing for you to do as a salesperson? Take your tie off. Yes. All right. But always dress for your customer, your client, and act like it. And as you're in leadership, you know, you have to act the role. You have to lead by example. And I think in this post-COVID world, that slipped a little bit with the hybrid workforce, you know, dressing even on a video call, you know, and how to dress for that. When we had to do training on how to dress on a video call. I'm like, guys, you can't come in a hoodie.

48:26I mean, you're making a sales call. You can't make a, but we're home. I'm like, I don't care. You're, you know, the client is in a hoodie. I don't care. You got to look the role. You got to act the role. You're asking customers to spend millions of dollars with you. Act the role. And be aware of your surroundings. I'll never forget, I was doing an interview of somebody on video via Zoom. They were fine, but they were having technical troubles. So they called in a spouse from the other room who came in topless to come in and fix the computer. And I'm like, am I looking at the camera? You see there's a camera.

49:03put a shirt on yeah that's not a good that's not a good that's not a good scene is it right like i just thought come on people think about things just think about it's all i mean that's i think people for kind of forget the practical stuff yes it's very practical we you know it doesn't matter how high how high you are it still becomes a very practical there's a lot of practical stuff that you have to think about all the time. And, and, you know, as you move up in the world and, you know, going back to, you know, merging companies and so on, you have to also put yourself or you have to have people that you trust that could communicate to you as a leader that, Hey, this is what your people are afraid of.

49:47This is what they're scared about. You think this is easy, but you go down three layers and these people are frightened and you got to get through them And they're looking to you for that message. They're not looking at it from me. They're not looking at it from their boss. They're looking to you to set the right tone, the right message, and they're trusting you. And you can't fail that trust. Right. If you fail to trust, you lose your team. I think that's another thing that I've always, you know, trust has always been a big thing. And I'm not the, I'm sometimes people will tell you, if you talk to people, report to me, I'm not the easiest person to work with sometimes.

50:31But one thing that they will do, what they will tell you is they could trust that I'm on their side. I will cover their back and I will never ask them to do anything I will never do. Well, you remind me of the kind of guy that has very high expectations of himself and then therefore expects that the people in their circle has those same high expectations. And that can create some challenges when you're pushing people, sometimes a little bit further than they might be comfortable. Oh, yeah, very much so. But then when you're doing that as a leader, you have to be aware that eventually the student starts challenging you.

51:14And you have to be prepared for that. And you have to welcome that. Right. You have to welcome that. And that's a key too. That's a key area of leadership also. So when you first started out with Canon, what was the product that you were predominantly selling? My first sales job in the suburbs of Illinois was selling copiers. Okay. I sold copiers.

51:41I interviewed for a ton of different jobs, and I actually had an interview with a big computer company. I won't say the name, but a big computer company. My professor, my sales professor set me up with a regional, a regional VP in Minneapolis with this computer company. I went up there. They flew me up and all this kind of stuff. And, and literally the guy said, okay, I'm going to set the record straight. You're only here because your professor is my best friend. Oh, wow. Great. All right. So I guess, I guess I don't have the job. He goes, I don't have the, he goes, literally I could interview anybody I want.

52:21I got the top business schools and so on. But here's what I will do and talk about mentors. He goes, I will go, I will put you through a full interview. I will give you a critique on your interviewing skills. I will then allow you to call me anytime you want to during your, during your initial start to your career. And in two years, reach back out to me. And if you succeed and are successful, then we'll talk seriously because you've, you've done everything I wanted you to do. And he's the one that said, you should get into the copier industry. At that point, it was, it was a growing industry. And he's like, you should get into the industry.

53:05You will learn all the hard knocks about sales, that you will learn everything. He goes, I have a number of people in my staff right now that started in the industry um and uh that he's the one that said it yeah i flew back and uh i interviewed a couple of uh different entities in this space and uh i got a job with this subsidiary of cannons and uh haven't looked back i mean it was the best interestingly enough his division was shut down before i got to call him back in two years for a job. Oh, wow. See, fate. It was fate. Yeah, it was fate. It was fate. So I've never looked back and it's, it's been a, it's been a great career.

53:48Um, I've met a ton of people, traveled the world. Uh, I, I probably wouldn't have, wouldn't have changed anything really. What is Canon's portfolio today? So Canon is a company that is, has consumer products and it has the camera industry, camera business from a consumer product perspective, has consumer printers, which is a very large part of our business. We also have our CEO in Japan decided to get into the medical side of the industry and got into medical industry, has bought through acquisition a number of large entities and has really built out a really good medical part of the business, really focused on imaging everything when you hear through all the words and we say everything has something to do with an image okay x-ray equipment x-ray equipment things like that so that's medical um we also are we're building satellites because cameras in the sky taking weather pictures and things like that so imaging again um we're also uh we're making machines that make chips that's an image that's printing an image.

55:02It's just a chip because as chips become so important, as we know, Canon is big time into that. We're big time into industrial print. So, you know, printing books, printing magazines. If you have a family member that is going to a grade school or high school and gets a yearbook, it's probably, those yearbooks are probably printed on a Canon product at some point. So that's a big part of our business. And we're continuing to expand into more solutions-based business and services as our business, you know, as we want to continue to grow. We have a huge customer base in the B2B space, and we want to continue to expand that opportunity to grow with them.

55:47So that's really the portfolio of products. But, you know, everything has a root to an image. That's how we've kind of started, and that's kind of where we're rooted from is that image. Is there anything new on the horizons for Canon in the next year or so? It's really adding new products, new type of Canon technology into cameras, newer cameras, newer. We're introducing brand new presses. We just introduced our, I'm going to get a technical, a b2 size uh press canon's never been involved with that space um and now we have we have a route we have a product that's coming out uh in that space it should be a game changer for us uh the customers that have seen it uh really really appreciate it you know now and we're getting into corrugated printing which is a whole different world i mean the machine itself is like grocery store it's that big because now you know when you think about packaging people are printing on packages they want variable data variable data is key to print now it's you know you want to people that are packaging things want to put a package together for Lindsay they don't want to put it that that sells to Lindsay they don't want to just generically put a package together so corrugated printing is a big big opportunity for us so label printing things like that so these are all new products that we're just launching right now literally launching right now that will put us into another whole another level of um of this industry that we're going to be that's so that's yeah that's that's my new project to monetize that in the americas what's next for peter uh it's probably retirement at some point here in the next in the next few years i you know my wife and i talk about it often i love what i do yeah it's it's it's it's hard to leave something when you love what you do and um you know it's not it's it's not about the money anymore it's about the love of the job the love of the you know just last week i was with a client in europe showing showcasing these new products you know getting to travel to Europe and getting to travel to Brazil and Mexico and Canada and so on, going and seeing and collaborating and doing those things and then teaching and coaching, it's fun.

58:18So who knows? But the time has come. I think my family's going to put a stopwatch on me at some point. Well, here's the thing. As long as you continue to make the impact that you're having and making for your people, for your company, then you are in the right spot. Oh, thank you very much. You're welcome. Peter, it has been my absolute pleasure to have you on the show today. And I'm thrilled that we were able to share your story and your insights with our listeners who hopefully can use them as they are advancing their own leadership careers. I hope I could help a little bit. Thank you very much, Lindsay.

58:56Thank you. You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO Alliance founder Cameron Herold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share, and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry-leading COOs, visit COOalliance.com.