Interview Script
Warren Cook CEO of TheacQuireTechonology Solutions
1) Can you tell us about yourself and your career?
Hi my name is Warren Cook; I am the CEO of acQuire Technology Solutions. A junior scientist by profession spent collectively twenty five years in the mining industry, fifteen years prior to joining acQuire. I spent twelve years as a mining geologist in various operations throughout Australia and New Zealand, and three years as a resource consultant doing various consulting projects.
2) Can you describe a typical workday?
Yeah I will get up fairly early, I like to check my email first off and then I catch public transport into the company. Most of my day is really just engaging with many of the people within the organization. A typical day would be just having lots of discussions with people. It is not very structured from day start to day end.
3) Describe your role in the company?
My perception is quite different in that my role as CEO is quite inward looking as opposed to outward looking to our customer base. I deal more with our internal aspects, making sure the company runs well, and is delivering a good service to our customer base. So I have a number of other people that interact with the customer base day in and day out so I tend not to get too involved in that.
4) What is your leadership style?
Very much by example, I will do anything and everything. I like to participate in all parts of the business. A big part of my role is actually traveling to each of the offices and spending three to four weeks in each office doing whatever needs to be done. So we feel that that is a good way of understanding what are the idiosyncrasies of each of the regions, and if you are a fly through CEO and spend two or three days in each office, everyone is polite and you do not really see the issues of the regions. By spending at least three to four weeks then those issues come out and you can actually participate in the problem solving.
5) What does good performance mean for you?
Those are several aspects, one I want to make sure people are having fun because that is primarily what I want out of my position and I come to work each day and I enjoy what I do and who I do it with. The retention, if there is a low turnover and people are staying for a long time I think I am doing a fairly good job, I am helping to create an environment. And lastly, I report to the board and I answer to them and we do have financial measurements; we establish a forecast at the beginning of each year and if I deliver that forecast then I think I have had a pretty successful year.
6) Why does your company have this organizational structure?
Hi my name is Warren Cook; I am the CEO of acQuire Technology Solutions. The main differentiator is really the quality control and the effort that we put in to the underlying data model; the consistency of the data model where you can be on any site and the data model is the same. So it is persistent across more than four hundred sites and I think that that has built the foundation of how robust the technology is. So supporting all of that is acquire support so we have had a very good reputation of delivering a high level of support service being available for our customers and being able to answer their questions promptly.
7) What does your company do and how is it different?
So our customers a consistent approach and a consistent face of acQuire wherever they are in the world and it really came about because of, say six, seven years ago we really saw globalization become more of an issue where rather than dealing with companies regionally, we were dealing with organizations which were global. So they wanted consistency across all of their regions, which fitted us perfectly. So we wanted consistent systems in our business just as our customers wanted consistent systems in businesses so we developed this one company model where, although we are very diverse across the organization with about twenty different passports, but probably a greater number of ethnic groups. So we are very diverse in culture and location but we have a consistent set of systems and values, which we comply with.
Issue:
What is an important issue that your company currently facing?
My name is Warren Cook; I am the Chief Executive Officer of acQuire Technology Solutions. The problem is that a repeat of the 2008 global financial crisis is a distinct possibility. Now the acQuire executive team needs to develop a strategy to deal with a situation that potentially the company could be in a loss position.
Cause:
What caused this issue to arise and why is it important?
So it is important for us to be able to deal with this because it is all about sustainability of the organization. We have a responsibility to our staff, and many organizations during the 2008 global financial crisis ceased to exist. Now part of our whole strategy is to have a long term career for people so maintaining the organization which supports their employment is very important to us.
