EXECUTIVE PERSPECTIVE By Tom Pundyk A Enabling a Culture of Innovation S CANADIAN EQUIPMENT FINANCING PROVIDER National Leasing enters its 40th year in business, President and CEO Tom Pundyk shares how the company culture has helped it stand the test of time while steering toward a bright tomorrow. Over the past 40 years, you have seen many equipment leasing companies come and go. What advice do you have for other companies striving to stand the test of time? Focus on your people. I was Nation-al Leasing’s fi rst employee, and along the way there were opportunities to go elsewhere, but the truth is my co-workers became my family and National Leasing became my home. And that’s how we have always aimed to treat people—like family. We create an environment that most people do not want to leave. When you achieve that, the knowledge base your employ-ees bring to the job every day is unfathomable. Your em-ployees should understand the business so well that they are constantly coming up with ways to improve, and they see that as part of their job. in the economic cycle. Will investing heavily in technology be viable? Investing in technology will be abso-lutely necessary to combat rising rates. As margins grow thinner, leasing companies must become smarter and more effi cient. For example, our prod-uct release last year, National Leasing Interactive, created a digital quoting experience for equipment dealers while allowing us complete control over variable pricing that is custom-ized to each specifi c dealer. Before, we had no hard data on how oft en dealers were quoting end users and they very easily could be using out-of-date rates. Th ere is now complete transparency that can be controlled at the click of a button. And I am most proud of this because the idea came from a cross-functional team of employees who, aft er being given the resources, brought it to market in only 12 months. Th at is what it will take to stay competitive. How do you create a culture that is so open to innovation? Ensure your leadership team trusts employees to make the right decisions. When employees sense this, they automat-ically feel empowered and become naturally engaged in the process. Employees will then embrace the change that comes with new ideas, as well as come up with their own ideas. It just makes sense that highly engaged employees are natu-rally innovative. Constantly churning out meaningfully unique ideas can be tiring over a long period of time. How do you keep employees motivated? A systems approach to innovation is key to driving meaning-fully unique ideas. We actually have a team of people who were trained on fostering ideas. Th rough this, we’ve empowered employees to implement these ideas, which can lead to disrup-tive change that needs to be carefully managed. I think what makes our approach diff erent is we make sure employees have fun along the way. On Dec. 1 we launched a complete rewrite of our core leasing system with in-house developers and an ag-ile project management approach. Our employees are working harder than they ever have, but time is taken for paper, rock, scissor tournaments, “Nerf” gun wars and pie-throwing com-petitions. Focusing on the positive and keeping people happy is always a good return on investment. I National Leasing was the 2016 winner of the ELFA Technology and Operations Award and was recently named to Canada’s Top 100 employers list for the fi rst time. From its head offi ce in Winnipeg, it adjudicates over $2 billion in fi nancing applications per year, brought to them by 60 account managers and an elite broker network from across Canada. Where do you think companies should be focusing their efforts as we look at shifting demographics? We are now at the population-tipping point where there will be fewer baby-boomers than younger generations. Leasing companies are no longer competing with each other. We are competing with leading-edge fi ntechs, who appeal to a generation that expects to do everything online and experi-ence instant gratifi cation. Creating a digital experience that is personalized to each customer’s journey with us will be critical to our success in the next fi ve to 10 years and beyond. All of this will likely happen in a rising rate environment, given where we are 56 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 EQUIPMENT LEASING & FINANCE MAGAZINE 123RF