The View From the Trenches

Larry Walton
General Manager Of Operations,
Powercomm Inc., Edmonton

What are your daily challenges? Finding enough resources (people, especially qualified people), setting the direction, pleasing customers and customizing to different customers’ needs and wants. I ask, “How do you make money offering this service?” We have to justify offering services to customers.

How do you overcome the challenge of finding qualified people? It’s been a struggle like everything else. We try every avenue. After three years, PowerComm looks at different out-of-the-box ways to get to folks: word of mouth, unique benefits, employee stock purchase program, which gives staff a bit of ownership in the company.

What satisfies you in your role? Challenge – period. There’s always something to do. PowerComm has been really aggressive on the growth side – it’s one of the attractions to working here. It’s also aggressive on the acquisitions side.

What are you looking forward to in 2009? Is there anything to look forward to with all the doom and gloom? We’re still looking at acquisitions. Broadening our footprint and getting to be a larger player, so we can employ that many more people. We’re just over 500, but ambitious to double it in a few years.

What keeps you working with PowerComm? Well, if I won the 6/49, and got the numbers, I’d probably retire (laughs)…. It’s the challenge. We all need something to get up in the morning for. That’s something about PowerComm; you don’t lack for different things to do and new challenges – a lot of creative problem-solving – to serve customers and be profitable at it. And it’s just good fun. We’ve got a pretty good culture. We’re solidly grounded. It’s a blue-collar mentality, not run out of an ivory tower.

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