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November 27, 2007
CEO's family falls hard for Team Power Smart
Kerry Gold
For bchydro.com
When Pharmasave CEO Sue Paish joined Team Power Smart, she knew she’d have to enlist her family to get with her new green agenda, or her efforts would be wasted.
“It doesn’t do any good if I’m turning off lights and the rest of the house is turning them on,” she says.
What she didn’t expect was just how fully her family would embrace the Power Smart recommendations on their home.
Her husband Brad Gunderson was especially hard-bitten. The day after Power Smart’s Brent Billey visited their home, Gunderson purchased $700 in energy efficient, compact fluorescent light bulbs.
To his wife’s amazement, Gunderson had replaced every bulb in the house. To his teenage daughters’ irritation, he had replaced the ones in their bedrooms – a parent-free zone.
And he was just getting started.
The following week, Gunderson had concrete poured in the home’s unfinished crawl space, and he had insulation installed. He added weather stripping around the doors, even though it stuck out from the front door and was ugly enough to embarrass their 14-year-old daughter.
One week later, Paish found herself talking to her husband on the phone from an appliance store, where he was about to purchase an energy efficient washing machine. An energy efficient dryer soon followed.
“I keep telling [Power Smart's Brent Billey] that he created a monster,” says Paish.
Not the greenest of families
Daughter Kyla, 17, a member of the environment committee at school, did her part by distributing Team Power Smart T-shirts and pamphlets to her classmates. But this wasn’t exactly a family of tree-huggers. When Paish got the invitation to become a Power Smart leader, she was excited, but she had her reservations.
“I have to be honest here,” says Paish. “I was very much in the learning stage of being environmentally friendly. Did we recycle? Yeah, we recycled our bottles and our cans and our newspapers. Were we disciplined about it? No. Did we pay much attention to how we ran our lives and our household in the context of being Power Smart? No, we didn’t.
“I thought, ‘I am going to look like such an idiot because there are going to be all these people who are so green and I’m not.”
On the phone, Paish's energy is palpable. She's a driven, forward thinker armed with a self-effacing sense of humour.
“So you know by now that I talk a lot,” she jokes, after giving a brief history on herself. “I’m 49 going on 110,” she responds, when asked her age. “You go ahead and use that because my kids will fully agree. Teenage girls are brutal critics of their mother, right? I was complaining about having lines, and my 14 year old said, ‘Just start at the top and work down.’ And she’s serious.”
Taking Power Smart to Pharmasave
It’s not surprising that Paish would motivate her entire family to get with the program. As a CEO and former managing partner for a major law firm, Paish has learned a thing or two about human nature. She’s in the process of turning Pharmasave a deeper shade of green too.
When she introduced the idea of launching a Power Smart program at work, her Pharmasave office staff reacted with genuine enthusiasm. In November, they launched Power Smart in their administration offices. In January, it will be launched to their retail staff. The company is also pulling all the bags currently used in their stores and replacing them with biodegradable, recyclable ones.
It comes down to involving your staff in the process, says Paish, and for a lawyer who once specialized in workplace rights, this sort of thing comes naturally to her.
“It’s the same at work, talking to the staff and getting their input and testing their interest, and grabbing onto that," she says. "Quite frankly, it’s the staff that has really been pushing this forward. I’m keen and enthusiastic. But I was thinking of a staff meeting in January and I was told, ‘Don’t wait that long. Just get on with it.’ And that’s the staff coming on board.”
From lawyer to CEO
Paish is relatively young to be the CEO of a major company with nearly 400 stores across the country.
But even at the law firm where she worked for 24 years she broke the barrier when she took the position of managing partner, a CEO-type position traditionally reserved for men more than 50 years old.
In 2005, she made the Women’s Executive Network’s top 100 list of “Canada’s Most Powerful Women.” The year before that, she was honoured with Vancouver’s Most Influential Women in Business award. And the year before that, she was named one of the 25 top women lawyers in Canada.
But when her term as managing partner was up, she put the word out that she wanted to switch career paths, and the offers came in.
“When they first approached me I was surprised because I don’t know retailing, I’m not a pharmacist I don’t have much experience in the franchise world – I sound perfect,” she says, tongue firmly in cheek. “But they were phenomenal because the approach was we have lots of franchisers and merchandisers and pharmacists. We need someone with leadership skills.
“And a lot of people in the industry said, ‘She’s not a retailer, she’s a lawyer for heavens sakes. What do lawyers know about retailing?
“But you can learn the business – it’s the people side, it’s getting people excited and inspired and encouraged to pursue a goal and that’s something that I like to do.”
Raised in B.C., schooled in England
Paish developed the adventurous streak early on. She was born in the East Kootenay town of New Denver, but she spent most of her childhood in Coquitlam. She also spent a few years in England because her parents, both teachers, didn’t like the Canadian school system and shipped each of their children one at a time to go to school in England.
When she was 10, Paish’s parents put her on a plane and sent her to England to live with relatives for two years for the sake of a better education.
“You grow up a lot when you do that,” says Paish. “I’ve carried that through with my kids. They’ve been raised to be very independent.” She obtained a law degree from the University of B.C. and went to work for Fasken Martineau Dumoulin, one of the biggest law firms in the province (which she would help grow into an international firm). As a “baby lawyer” she cut her teeth working on Expo 86. Later, she specialized in workplace conduct and human rights. And throughout her career, and even at home, she learned what motivates people.
“I really believe if you say to people, ‘Here’s a result that we need, such as in a Power Smart context, go get it, go figure out how to do it,’ 99 per cent of people will say, ‘Okay, I can do that,’ if they agree with the goal.”
An investment in the future
For Paish, the conservation message has been profound. She’s about to purchase a new car, and she’s decided on a hybrid, even though it will cost about $5,000 to $8,000 more.
“Should you spend more to be environmentally responsible?” she asks. “Our view is you have to take a long-term view of these things. Sure, we spent $700 on light bulbs but we probably won’t buy another light bulb for five or six years, and it’s the right thing to do.
“Even if we didn’t save money on our energy bill, it’s the right thing to do – and the right message to the kids and our family.”
Related links:
- Join Team Power Smart
- Sue Paish, Team Power Smart
