00:00:00:00 - 00:00:02:17
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
I'm here today with Mike Lewis to get his personal insights on the challenges of being a kind leader.
As the CEO of EON for seven years, he's had to face many difficult challenges that must have tested his ability to be kind.
What does being a kind leader mean to you?
00:00:18:13 - 00:00:43:07
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
How I would see kindness is creating psychological safety and create an environment in which people are not frightened of making mistakes. They are instead focused on opportunities. And when you take opportunities or when you take risks and try to take opportunities, it inevitably comes with a risk of failure. And it's how you deal with that, that ultimately makes a kind leader. And that means several things about how a leader behaves.
First of all, it means taking responsibility for yourself. It means having self-control. You know, I think emotion and anger keep out of the picture. And it's about your attitude to other people. You know, how you deal with them. When you have to make a difficult decision, you're honest about it. And so it doesn't mean being weak and it doesn't mean being nice, although niceness also has a place, and it doesn't mean ducking tough decisions. It means when you have to take a tough decision, you're honest with yourself and you're honest with your people and you do it in the right way.
00:01:20:18 - 00:01:32:00
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
Yeah, it's a wonderful answer. Thank you, Mike.
And what challenges as a business are you facing right now that really tests some of the definitions of kindness as you've just described there?
00:01:32:11 - 00:01:55:21
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
Well, if you look over the last few years in the energy industry, I already said, you know, we faced a price cap, we faced the pandemic, we faced our own internal challenge because we acquired N Power. And then we faced the catastrophic meltdown of the retail market with the energy crisis after Putin's invasion of Ukraine. All of those brought different challenges. I think probably the two that stand out for me, number one was when we acquired N Power, it became very clear, you know, because the business was heavily loss-making and EON was struggling before we acquired N Power because of the price cap and that’s hugely impacted the company's profitability. And that inevitably meant a very, very big restructuring program to get the company back to profitability. And that's where you are really challenged because you have to figure out a plan to do it. That inevitably means impacting large numbers of people. We had to make around 5000 people redundant. That's not pleasant, but you can't duck it because if you don't take the tough decisions and deal with that challenge in front of you, then you create an even bigger problem for even more people. And that's what the first big challenge was.
The second one was, was with COVID, and I can remember it very, very clearly the day that the lockdown was announced, the 23rd of March, by coincidence, was the same day that we announced the UK transformation program and the migration of all of our customers. The single biggest problem we had was if people can't come to work, we're going to have to lay off large numbers of people. And how does that work? We've never done it before. So I think again, clearly the Government announced the furlough scheme shortly afterward, so we managed that problem. But I think the kindness aspect there was again, communicating constantly with our employees, explaining to them what was going on, explaining where there was a challenge, what we were doing about it, and how we were helping them, creating space for them to do their job.
00:03:43:16 - 00:04:07:13
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
And then there's a much broader question here, and I know it's a topic that's close to your heart as well in terms of the planet and the green energy dynamic. You've got this balance around customers needing access to cheap energy, especially in the situation that we're in at the moment, and almost nowhere more pressing than no versus the need to make some big decisions, you know, in terms of the wider environmental impact, where do you stand on that?
00:04:07:21 - 00:04:53:23
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
I think the problem is if you look at the long-term perspective, net zero is a good thing, not just for the environment, but economically because if we don't look after the environment, there are catastrophic economic consequences. So the question is not does it make sense economically? The question is how are those costs and benefits distributed in time and over which people. The role of companies like ourselves is to be very straightforward with government and the regulator and to explain what role we can play, how we can drive innovation, how we can help customers access those technologies, and to give the government clarity over what kind of policy interventions, public policy interventions are required to ensure that customers can afford them. And it's about smart policy so that incentivizes people to make the right investment, it incentivizes government to make the right investment, and that the costs and the benefits are spread evenly.
00:05:06:03 - 00:05:25:22
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
And in the description so far, you've talked about the number of stakeholders and CEO’s. Really that's one of the big jobs is just managing a complex set of stakeholders. How do you manage, you know, government regulators, customers, employees, shareholders, etc. in an equitable way? When you come back to that kindness point.
00:05:25:24 - 00:05:45:24
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
I think in the end you have to understand the overall economics of the business. You know, in the end, all companies are businesses. They have to make a profit. If they don't make a profit, they won't last very long. Our job is to understand those economics and and treat people as equitably as we possibly can within that framework. And we're all for strong competition. I think that means, you know, that we can innovate, we can use our judgment on what the right risks to take are in the market, in the wholesale market, in the retail market. But what's necessary is that the government needs to make sure the industry itself is healthy by ensuring that we only allow responsible, well-managed companies that treat customers well, that treat all stakeholders well. And that's the key point, is we can only make the right trade-offs if the industry is healthy.
00:06:34:22 - 00:06:55:14
Ellen Fraser, Baringa.
Yeah, it's a very fair point. Tough question then. Yourself and a number of colleagues came under quite a lot of criticism over the winter period for what felt like quite a cruel approach to the forced install of pre-payment meters. How does that balance out with an overall approach to kindness again, as you've described it before.
00:06:55:05 - 00:06:58:11
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
This is a massive challenge and you know, again, it comes back to how do you make the right trade-offs. I mean in the end there are large numbers of people in this country who cannot afford to pay their energy bill. Now that's not a problem that can be solved by energy companies giving away energy for free. If we do that, then very quickly the industry goes bankrupt. And we don't like fitting prepayment meters to be very clear. Of course, some customers like it, but we have no other means of ensuring that we can collect the revenue we need to collect to pay our bills.
00:07:34:22 - 00:07:45:22
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
It would be good to understand, you've talked a lot about giving kindness almost into your stakeholder ecosystem. Where have you received kindness in return from that ecosystem?
00:07:45:24 - 00:08:20:19
Mike Lewis, now CEPO of Uniper
Generally it's reflected in in people and people's attitudes. And as I said, in the end, it's about your own attitude to yourself and to other people. But I remember times in my career where I thought, Oh, this is a problem. I remember many, many years ago when I was working with one of our power stations on a problem and I won't go into detail on it, but it involved exporting material to the USA and it looked like that material was being rejected when it landed in New York. And I thought, Oh dear, I'm in trouble now. I've made a catastrophic error. But my boss took me in his office, said, Look, I know there's a problem here. Don't worry, we'll sort it out and then we'll have a discussion afterwards about what happened. Now, in the event nothing happened, but I never forgot that he didn't rant and rave. If he didn't shout at me, that meant I rewarded him with my loyalty going forward. And that's why I say if you treat people in the right way, you receive it back with interest.
00:08:51:16 - 00:09:11:20
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
But we are in unprecedented times at the moment. Do you see an economic environment and a maybe a social environment where actually kindness is forced to take a bit of a back seat? Or do you personally see it as being as important, if not more important, than ever?
00:09:11:22 - 00:09:39:16
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
I don't think you can ever say that all of the things I've describe as kindness, creating psychological space, treating people with decency, respect, being honest, listening to their point of view, allowing people to express themselves. I don't think that ever goes out of fashion. Of course, it becomes more difficult if the circumstances are difficult, but it becomes even more important to do it when the circumstances become more difficult.
00:09:39:18 - 00:09:53:16
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
And it's a good point there actually just in terms of kindness, you know, as an energy supplier, as an example, you may be under pressure to give every everybody what they want. And, you know, that's a hard thing to balance. So is that a pressure that you've felt?
00:09:53:24 - 00:10:15:02
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
You can't give everybody everything they want. You know, if we make the wrong commercial judgement, it means we can't give a return to our investors. It means we can't invest in the future. It means we can't innovate, it means long term. We're not in an industry which is healthy. So we have to make all of those trade offs. But like I said, kindness is not about giving everything to everybody that they request. It's about how you how you make the trade offs, but don't think you don't have to make difficult decisions. You do.
00:10:28:23 - 00:10:40:13
Ellen Fraser, Baringa
Thank you. Just as a closing question then, are there kind of three top points that you could share in terms of when kindness becomes a real challenge and and how to deal with it?
00:10:41:01 - 00:11:03:24
Mike Lewis, now CEO of Uniper
The most important thing, as I said, is when things get really difficult and you feel like, you know, the walls are closing in from each side, you're facing challenges in every direction. It's even more important that you stop and take time to think about the situation, take an objective view, keep the cool head, make the right decisions by taking on board opinions. And you know, people may express opinions you don't like, but you nonetheless have to listen to it and then execute the decision once you've got the feedback in the right way, as I've said. And it's even more important when things are tough to ensure you do it in the right way, not less important.
