How principled leadership sped B.C. waterslide company toward success

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Ask Geoff Chutter what makes him a good leader and his answer is decisive.

“I'm Canadian.”

For the president and CEO of Richmond, B.C.-based WhiteWater, it’s not about being unfailingly polite or saying “sorry” all the time. From his perspective, being Canadian means upholding principles that are essential to business success.

“What our culture stands for, I think, is very powerful,” Chutter says, one day after being named the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2019 Pacific winner. “No bravado, no chest-pounding, just being honest and upfront, dealing on top of the table at all times, living up to commitments. When 98 per cent of WhiteWater’s work is outside of this country, I think I am greatly helped by that.”

WhiteWater is a $200-million business at the top of its industry, the largest designer of water parks and the biggest manufacturer of water-park products in the world. From waterslides to wave pools to water-themed rides, WhiteWater has more than 5,000 completed installations on six continents. It also has a great origin story.

In 1980, Chutter was a Vancouver-based accountant doing an audit in the B.C. interior when he came across the country’s first waterslide park, located in Kelowna. Sensing the potential in this nascent industry, he decided to go out on a limb and build his own water park.

“As an accountant, I always recognized that I could not, for the next 35 years of my life, simply tell other people how well or how unwell their company was performing. I knew I’d want to eventually get out there on my own,” he says.

With capital provided by an uncle and a bank loan, Chutter opened WhiteWater Waterslide Park in Penticton, B.C. Since there was nowhere to buy the slides or the moulds to make them, Chutter and his small team developed their own and constructed them in-house. The park performed well, but it was the slides that got all the attention.

“That first summer, four different men came to the park and said, ‘Boy we'd like to do one of those in my home town,’ and I ended up realizing that even as a 27-year-old, all you have to do is know a little bit more than the guy beside you and then you're deemed an expert,” he says.

Chutter signed contracts to create slides for two facilities in B.C., one in Washington State and one in Niagara Falls, Ont., and his true passion was born. He soon sold the water park and went full-time into the development, design and manufacturing of water-park products. Thirty five years later, WhiteWater has more than 650 employees and head offices in Vancouver, Shanghai, Barcelona and Dubai.

A key part of the company’s success has been its willingness to go global, Chutter says. When recessions presented challenges in the U.S. market, the company moved into new regions like the Middle East and China, which is now the top country by revenue.

But going global isn’t an easy road, he adds. Over the years, naysayers predicted WhiteWater would fail in many of the countries it now works in.

“You're told you're not going to be successful because people in this country don't swim, or people in this country don't like the sun for cultural reasons, and then you absolutely blow the barn doors off and prove them wrong,” Chutter says.

Another key to WhiteWater’s success has been attracting and retaining the right talent for the right jobs, he points out.

“It’s about getting the right people on the bus, sitting in the right seats, and valuing attitude over skill set. We’re taught to hire for skill set, but first and foremost you should hire for mindset. People that are positive, who have a ‘can-do’ attitude, a great work ethic.

“You can teach somebody skills, but you can’t teach mindset.”

It’s also important, he says, to be an approachable leader who values employees.

“I’ve been accused of being too soft-hearted and loyal to employees, but the people side of things is so important. When you spend even a little bit of time understanding employees’ lives and what many of them have gone through to get where they are, you end up developing a deep sense of respect and loyalty to them.”

Chutter has no doubt that WhiteWater’s strong, dynamic team is a huge part of why he was selected as one of the EY entrepreneurs of the year.

“When you’re a 600-person company, if you think that you are where you are just because of your own ability, you’re living on Dream Street,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t suffer from [that], fortunately.”

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.