When they talk about future CEOs in the oil patch, Kathleen Sendall's name always sits near the top of the list. As Petro-Canada's senior vice-president for North American natural gas, she has accumulated some battle scars, losing a bidding war last year for Canada Southern Petroleum Ltd. She has also gained industry breadth, having recently completed a term as "chair chick" of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Ms. Sendall talks about the challenges of her industry, and her own life as an energy executive:
You're often mentioned as a future CEO.
Oh man, that comes up quite a lot, and I've got to say [Petro-Canada CEO]Ron Brenneman is doing a great job. He has signalled he's not going anywhere in the immediate future.
I really like what I do and frankly I don't spend a lot of time thinking about whether I want to be a future CEO. That hasn't been how I have chosen to live my life. I kind of take it as it comes.
You didn't start off with a
burning ambition to be the boss
somewhere?
No, I always feel embarrassed when I go to those time-management seminars and when they say you're supposed to have your short-, medium- and long-term goals and you're supposed to spend time every day working on your long-term goals. I never quite managed to do that.
I've used the phrase "you have to be open to opportunities." When something comes along and you can't think of a really good reason not to do it, you should go ahead and do it, providing you're going to learn from it and develop a higher level of self-awareness and actualization.
You should also do it because there are few decisions in this life that are irreversible.
If the CEO job were offered, would you take it?
I don't know. It would depend on the job and circumstances, and where I was at in my life and my career.
How old are you now?
I don't tell anyone how old I am. It's become a bit of a joke now. I figure the only person who really needs to know that is my doctor probably -- and maybe the motor vehicles branch.
Your leadership style has been described in the past
as 'push, push hug.'
I think I will push people quite hard. My experience has been that folks will rise to that challenge, but you need to be pretty cognizant of the hug part of that equation. You need to watch as to whether or not you are pushing too hard, and when you are, the hug part is important.
But you have to withhold the hug for a while?
I don't run around hugging people, no. I'm not a hugger.
Are you an unconventional type of manager, someone who goes against the grain?
The obvious surface thing is that I am a female in a generally male-dominated industry. I've taken to call it a gender-challenged environment. That would be somewhat unconventional.
Am I unconventional in my approach? Maybe a bit.
In what way?
I tend to speak my mind quite clearly, some would say to the point of bluntness. I am not ambivalent in where I stand on issues.
In your association's pre-budget letter to Stephen Harper, I got the sense of an industry that feels it is under attack.
This period is a time of intense public scrutiny and some of my industry counterparts have called it a time of perfect storm. We have rising costs, labour shortages, climate change plans on both the provincial and federal front. We've got federal fiscal and tax changes and an impending royalty review by the province. One would not be remiss in saying there is a little bit of a feeling of piling on.
But the public wonders "why are these guys complaining, because they've had it so good?"
You only have to look at the fourth-quarter results to recognize that the conventional industry in the province is very challenged. A pretty high percentage of provincial royalties and taxes comes from the natural gas industry. This is now one of the highest-cost basins in the world in which to operate. And declining prices had a significant impact.
You know the stories of companies that are struggling, that have seen a significant decline in profits. I think it takes a little while for that perception to catch up in the public view, and recognize that this industry doesn't just continue to chug merrily along.
Some people would say it would be a good idea to cool down
energy activity.
I believe the market takes care of those sorts of things. Government intervention, in tapping on the brake, has not always been a positive thing for this industry. It certainly wouldn't be something that I would be saying -- that government intervention should be controlling the pace of growth.
How long have you been in
Alberta?
About 30 years and I saw the National Energy Program. And we all know, right?
As a Petrocan employee during most of that period, you probably bear the scars.
Yes, yes.
Was losing the Canada Southern bidding war a big blow personally to you?
I have to say not terribly, because we knew where we would go and we knew when we would stop.
And we stopped when we intended to stop.
I think it was a great example of the financial discipline in this company. We weren't going to get sucked into an endless round of increasing offers. It was one of those great learning experiences too.
Some people see it as a test of a female executive in a hostile
takeover?
I don't know what to say to that. There are lots of people in both genders involved in hostile takeovers. I think the decision we made was the right decision. It is exactly where we said we would go to and go no further. I actually consider from that standpoint that it was very much a success.
That discipline flies in the face of what people see as the free-spending Petro-Canada culture.
This has been a very focused, very lean and disciplined company. Ron has brought an extra element of that, but I would have to say the organization has become increasingly commercially astute since privatization 15 years ago. It is not the same Petro-Canada it was in 1978.
Yet isn't there still a residue of that stigma in Calgary?
I don't know, I don't tend to hear it. And I don't hear it from our partners. We do good work here.
What aspects of management have you had to work on the most?
One thing is having appropriate expectations of folks. It's really hard because you can see the picture so clearly in your head and you expect that some folks can see it just as clearly as you can, right off the bat. Often that is not the case. Sometimes I want to go from A to D without going via B and C on the way.
I get impatient, and I have to wait because sometimes it takes some folks time to catch up. It's not that they're not bright or they're stupid. It's just that they think differently than I do. They may not think in terms of a picture nor might they think holistically. They may need to see how the components build up to that picture.
What do you think of the
income trust debacle?
I can't say whether I think the decision was right or wrong. But it did create some strong concern and resentment which leads me to believe that, irrespective of the decision, the process could have been different.
Do you worry about Canadian ownership of the energy
industry?
Well, I am a Canadian, so I feel very strongly and proud about having a vibrant Canadian industry.
When I look back over the history of this basin, the winds of ownership and the identity of the players have cycled several times. It will be what it will be, and it will cycle the same as it has in the past.
Kathleen Sendall
Senior vice-president,
North American natural gas
Petro-Canada, Calgary
Born: Birth date undisclosed, Toronto
Education: Bachelor of Science, mechanical engineering, Queen's University, 1978
Executive program, University of Western Ontario Business School, 1980.
Career highlights:
Joined Petro-Canada out of Queen's
Spend two years with Nova Gas Transmission
Rejoined Petro-Can as engineering supervisor, offshore and international joint ventures
1996: Vice-president, engineering and technology
2002: Senior vice-president for Western Canada
2006-07: First woman to chair Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers