Ep. 211: Dr. Douglas Clayton - Documenting Great Leadership with the FilmDoc

Connect with Douglas:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-douglas-clayton-414a785/
Learn more about FilmDoc:
https://thefilmdoc.com/
Heart of Camden Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/439742490
Dovere of Camden Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/327729693


Full Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00]       < Intro
>


 


Adam:           
Welcome to Count Me In, the podcast for accounting and finance
pros working in business. I'm Adam Larson, and today we examine
leadership from a different angle, with Douglas Clayton,
affectionately known as the FilmDoc. 


 


Neha Ratnakar caught up with him to discuss his journey from
making crowd-pleasing HR videos for a satellite company, to
researching leadership at Wharton for his PhD. To advising
C-suite executives through the lens of filmmaking. There's links
to the trailers for the award-winning documentaries in the show
notes. So be sure to check them out if you're interested. Now sit
back and enjoy this great conversation with Douglas Clayton.


 


[00:00:43]       < Music
>


 


Neha:           
  I was going through your profile and it
fascinated me, among many other things, by the way, that you had
a very long and interesting career in SES satellites. Tell us how
was it working with actual rocket scientists and what lessons did
your time in SES teach you?


 


Douglas:         That's
a great question. There are a couple of really fun elements of
working with rocket scientists. One of them is when I go to
family dinners, or parties, or functions, and people say, "What
do you do?" I get to say that I work with rocket scientists, and
that's an instant attention grabber. 


 


But certainly much more substantial than that is just working
with folks who are so smart. And most of the engineers and
scientists who I've had the pleasure of working with are modest
folks. They don't have big egos, they work really hard, they love
to figure out problems. They actually love to have problems so
they can have something to figure out. So I've always enjoyed it.
Always considered it a great privilege to work with people who
are so smart and, in many ways, so very kind as well.


 


In terms of, "What was it like to work at SES?" It was a lovely
experience, life-changing experience, I'll say, actually. The way
I ended up working at SES is I worked for GE Capital for many
years. Then I ended up transferring to their satellite business,
which was headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. And three
months later, we were sold to a tiny company called SES, in the
tiny country of Luxembourg. 


 


Now, you can maybe imagine going from working for this giant
company being acquired by a small company. We all had choices to
stay, or to maybe move on with our careers, or to stay with SES.
And the best decision that I made, career decision, was to stay
with SES, and the reason is because, at that point, I was an HR
manager, or also known as a generalist.


 


And what we discovered is that as an HR person, and then
eventually as a leader, our decisions really mattered when you
worked for a small company. Where when we worked for GE we were
often in execution mode. 


 


So then to move from a big company where the big decisions were
being made in Connecticut. To a small company where they were
relying on us in Princeton to help guide the corporate office in
Luxembourg, which, again, it was a very small company. 


It really mattered and it helped to develop our confidence. And
then as I evolved in terms of leadership and the company moving
up in the organization, that happened more rapidly because of the
size of the company than it would have happened with GE. 


 


Working for a company that's headquartered in Europe was a real
game changer, as well. Because I needed to put on a different hat
and look at work and look at the world through a different lens,
not just an American lens, which was fine. But, now, I really
needed to understand, "Hey, how do we do leadership? 


 


How do our accountants and finance people, how do they need to
work together from Europe, between Europe and the U.S.? 


 


How do our rocket scientists work together? 


 


How do we merge these two cultures? Very different country
cultures and company cultures?" So it was quite a learning
experience, for me, something that I could have never gained at
GE, in the position that I was in, and it's something that I
would've never gained just through university.


 


Neha:           
  That's so fascinating, and I'm glad you made the
switch and stayed on. All right, I loved what you said about
having problems to solve, actually loving the fact that you have
problems to solve. Now, tell me when Covid-19 hit, it must have
been very difficult for SES. Because satellite making or
maintaining them is not something that you can take back home
with your laptop and do it from your dining table. So how did the
leaders, and the people teams, in SES make this new reality work?


 


Douglas:         It was
extraordinary, what happened. I had a front-row seat because I
was part of a task force, the Covid task force, and we would meet
weekly, and I was on that team for several months and until I
retired. But watching the team, which was led by our human
resources leader, Evie Roos, at the time. 


 


It was extraordinary, the decisions that they were making and the
stakes were so high. Part of our satellite business is,
certainly, working with space engineers, and satellite engineers,
and rocket scientists. But we also have, just as important,
dynamite teams of people who actually operate. And I'll say
quote-unquote, "Fly our satellites." They work 24/7.


 


And, so, what were we going to do with them? So certainly we
allowed, I'll say 95% of the organization to work from home, or
the vast majority, and that was a whole another challenge and
project.


 


But then we have this other group of people where we can't allow
them to work from home. We really needed them to come into the
office. To sit at the monitors and to take care of that part of
our very important, essential, part of our business. And, so, it
was really around listening, and listening to what people
recommended. Listening to the experts in the field. Listening to
the supervisors and the employees, and just making decisions
based on what was best for them. 


So, for instance, the folks who were our satellite operators, who
had to come into the office every day, we had meals delivered to
them. It was an extremely sterile environment. 


If there was anyone who was near someone who had Covid, then,
that person needed to quarantine. It was very strict because you
can imagine potential disaster of having a team of people, who
can no longer come into the office to fly satellites because
Covid has spread through there. It was executed exceptionally, so
that was just one area of our business. 


 


And, then, of co...