Carla Reid is the CEO of Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) Water, one of the largest utilities in the country, serveing over 1.8 million residents through 11,000 miles of water and sewer mains, 2 water filtration plants, and 6 Water Resource Recovery Facilities. She also served on the boards of several reputed organizations such as DC Water, Prince George County Revenue Authority and was an adjunct professor at the University of the District of Columbia.
Carla first tells us about her upbringing, and how that, along with some early career mentors, motivated her to grow from entry level to the corner office at WSSC. She then talks about her "Triple A" challenge - aging infrastructure, an aging workforce, and customer affordability issues. Of course, all of this was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Innovation is key in meeting all of these challenges, and while the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) will help with some improvements, much more needs to be done in terms of system-wide upgrades.
Carla wants WSSC to be a "world class" organization - not just in the water industry, but as a company that both customers and employees are passionate about. She explains.
From there we look at Carla's overall approach to system-wide improvements and the idea of "simplify, focus, and connect."
Climate change is certainly a major factor in the water sector - we explore how WSSC is preparing for the future in that regard. We also talk specifically about the word change: and the different ways to look at change. This involves going to the change instead of letting it come to you, and getting buy-in from your entire team on your strategic plan.
A topic that Carla is very passionate about is STEM, or STEAM (with the addition of the Arts). She was often the first woman to hold many of the positions she was in. She talks about the many ways to connect with girls and women to get them involved with STEAM and related career paths.
Mahesh and Carla talk about how they've evolved as leaders and CEO's over the years. For Carla, she talks about only competing with yourself, not needing to know everything, and work-life balance.
Finally, we talk about the future workforce in the water industry- and the skills they will need. Budgeting is an important skill, but don't forget about the ability to function in the political world!
Links:
WSSC Water Website: https://www.wsscwater.com/
Carla's Bio: https://www.wsscwater.com/person/carla-reid
Aquasight Website: https://aquasight.io/
Mahesh: Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I'm with Carla Reid, chief executive officer for WSSC water. She's an engineer with an MBA degree, started as a field supervisor and climbed the organization to become CEO of one of the largest utilities in the country. She also served on the boards of several reputable organizations, such as DC Water, Prince George county revenue authority, and was an adjunct professor at the University of the District of Columbia. This will be a fascinating and insightful discussion on how Carla sees the future of water.
Carla: Thank you Mahesh. Thank you so much for having me.
Mahesh: Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be a real pleasure. So right off the bat on this, you have climbed from the bottom to the top of the organization at WSSC water. It's an amazing feat, at least from my perspective and very few have such opportunities. What inspired you to take these stairs to the corner office?
Carla: The first thing I can say that seriously inspired me was my parents, my parents just taught me how to share and how to serve. And so that gave me the idea that I didn't have any limits on what I could do. And so they just stressed being prepared, but doing well in school and they support it, everything that I wanted to do, including my love for math and science, and I also was a real rambunctious kid because I was very competitive and they never ever did anything.
To discourage me, it was all encouraging. And then I had the great opportunity to have my first serious full-time job here at WSSC water. And I had a supervisor who planted a seed and the seed was that if I focused on self-improvement, that I could be the general manager of WSSC water one day and this seed was planted into a 26 year old civil engineer and so very impressionable and seriously rough around the edges if you know what I mean.
Mahesh: Exactly. Yeah. So it seems like you grew up with no limits, competitive, and then the first job, your mentor, or your manager told you that there's no limits to how you can grow if you improve yourself. That's an amazing, amazing foundation to have.
Carla: Right. It is. And it was because then it wasn't like I thought about that statement every day. But once that seed was planted, I couldn't get it out of my spirit. And so I was doing all kinds of things to build up my portfolio. As a matter of fact, up until the time I left WSSC water in 2006, I had nine different jobs, at, all these different levels in the organization. When I left WSSC water the first time in 2006, I was deputy general manager. And then when I left, I went to both of the counties, that WSSC water serves. And I knew that I had a strong portfolio, but my ultimate goal was to come back to WSSC water and to serve in the position that I serve in today.
So in 2016, I became the 12th, general manager and CEO of WSSC water. And the first woman to serve in this capacity in WSSC water's 103 year history
Mahesh: I think we're going to touch on this. You're going to have a lot to contribute to women in stem. Okay. And I'll get back to that one, but listen, it's amazing, and I love leaders with no limits, but they're doing something that's for the better of humanity or the better of their community.
So that's an amazing, amazing inspiration to have. Now talking about WSSC water. This is no small utility. You're serving 1.8 million residents, 11,000 miles of water and sewer. Two water filtration plants, six waste water resource. It's a big system. What are the challenges you face and the opportunities that you are focused on?
Carla: The challenges I've faced, really a lot of utilities face. This is nothing. I call them the triple a challenge. We have aging infrastructure. We have an aging workforce and we have customer affordability issues. So that in itself presents a challenge. It's a constant challenge. In addition to that, we have rising costs, the new regulations lead and copper rule changes.
And all of this is against that backdrop where we have decreasing water consumption. We have a 6%. Decline in water consumption over the last 20 years because of all of the great conservation measures our customers are doing, and then also much political resistance to raising rates.
So. That's the basis for most of the challenges. But if you take the last two years and you pile that on top of the normal challenges, the last two years, we all experienced the impacts of COVID-19 and it's really taken a toll on our workforce mentally and physically. Everyone's just drained. We've had to adapt our policies and procedures, change policies, and procedures to be supportive of programs and our employees, you know, to meet the needs that they have. And then we had a serious financial impact on our organization because of COVID 19, because we made a commitment. We're in the water business, right? The first line of defense for COVID-19 was sanitizing, washing your hands. And so we made a commitment not to turn off any one's water and also to suspend late fees and that put us in a financial crunch quite frankly. And add on top of that, the issues that we've had with supply chain, it's been tough to get the materials we need and not have prices go up. It's, it's just been the perfect storm.
Mahesh: Right? Several tsunamis.
Carla: Yes. Several tsunamis. It's an honor and a privilege to be leading in such a time as this. Great challenges, but with great challenges, Mahesh, you know, comes awesome opportunities. And so WSSC water is absolutely focused on turning those challenges into opportunities. And at the heart of that is innovation. We see innovation as a key strategy for us to overcome.
Some of those challenges get a chance to solve some really tough problems. So innovation and research and strategy are the key components of us really exploring what opportunities are out there for us. And we're just super excited about that.
Mahesh: Yeah, that is so much to look forward to. Right. And how to attack these challenges.
Now that brings me to, because you talked about the AAA challenge, the rising cost and the stagnating rates, etc, the BIL has been a great welcoming thing for the water sector. $55 billion of bipartisan infrastructure law. Right? So my question is first, are you tapping into this and B) independent of that, where is the focus for your investments in the next five years?
Carla: So absolutely we're going to be tapping into that. We are going to make sure that we explore every opportunity to take advantage of that Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act. It's a historic investment for the nation's water and wastewater infrastructure for sure.
And we're going to be working with the Maryland department of the environment through their state revolving funds to see if we can be aggressive and apply for them when it becomes available. So we're working with other utilities. We're working with industry organizations. We are working with the US EPA as guidance is still being developed.
And we also know that the infrastructure act is not going to be a cure-all as well, because we have, as you say, 11,000 miles of infrastructure. It's buried. It's out of sight. It's out of mind. And so we have to really explore some additional strategies, possibly looking into getting some kind of dedicated funding for infrastructure.
This infrastructure act is incredibly important, but I think we need to also have some dedicated funding to deal with this buried infrastructure. We are making several investments in our system. We are renewing our critical infrastructure and this is a great time to have additional assets be added to that because our rate payers are not going to be able to sustain, all of this investment that we need to do.
We are doing serious upgrades to. Plants water filtration, plants wastewater... well actually our water resource recovery facilities. Cause we rebranded our wastewater utilities into water resource recovery facilities. So we're standing up a bioenergy project at one of our water resource recovery facilities.
And we're also renovating and replacing some of our out data facilities, our service depots, all of those investments. It's a lot. We're looking at critical high voltage, electrical infrastructure as well, and we never can forget renewing our water distribution system and our transmission network.
We also have to make sure that we're mitigating infiltration and influence through our sewer system, and it's a heavy, heavy lift. So. I'm hoping that yes, the infrastructure act fuels these investments, but more specifically, I want them to seriously fund these investments. And I want to look for alternatives to make sure that the future is a good one for this utility.
Mahesh: I mean, you're making upgrades. Pretty much everything you said. You're upgrading everything in your system pretty much.
Carla: Yeah, that's right.
Mahesh: And then the infrastructure bill is really just a small down payment for you.
Carla: That's what I'm trying to say. That's great. I don't want to underemphasize how awesome that is and how historic that is.
In addition to that, I do believe that we've got to treat buried infrastructure as well as we have treated our above ground infrastructure, roads and bridges, a lot of emphasis goes on to how can we make that better? Right. And so I want to change the focus.
Mahesh: And that kind of brings me to something. When I was researching prior to this meeting, our discussion here, I heard the word world-class quite a few times.
And especially from you in the past, what does world-class really mean in the context of WSSC? Because you're a very local provider, but you're still thinking global, right? In terms of performance and what specific areas you are moving the needle towards being a world-class.
Carla: So simply I'll put it this way.
World-class is when other utilities use us as as a benchmark. And we use, strategy and innovation in our organization, and that makes us not afraid to take smart risks and to advance the water sector without losing sight on what's going on with the people. And I'm talking about the people who made it.
Everything happening in the utility and the people were doing it for, so we're always fulfilling our clean water mission. That's part of being world-class as well. But the standard is, others are looking to us to see what should be done to run an organization that is focused on the clean water mission and is doing things, you know, slightly unorthodoxly, you know, cause one of our main goals by being innovative is to look for alternative revenue sources.
We have, of course rate payers are the main source of our revenue, but we want to be looking past that, you know, what are the better ways to do business and look for ways to bring in multiple streams of revenue? And the way we're moving the needle is really four basic ways. Employees first. Employees first. If we don't have the people dedicated at this company to find new and creative ways to transform what we do, then everything else doesn't happen.
So we've got to take care of our own. And while we're doing that, know that we're here for one reason and one reason only, and that is to serve our customers. So we've got to focus on our customers, deliver the customer service that they expect. And, you know, I just don't want to be a good utility. I want to be our customer's favorite company.
I don't know what your favorite companies are, Mahesh. One of my favorites, sorry, I've got to give Amazon a plug, but I love Amazon. When I come home, my stuff is on the porch. And I get it quickly without any
Mahesh: hassle. My son works there. So I'll take it.
Carla: See. I didn't even know that! I didn't even know that! You know, the Disney experience, all of that. Chick-fil-A, you know, when they say what do they say? It's our pleasure. You know, that just, I don't even know what.. The food doesn't even have to be that good. I just feel good when I go there. So I want WSSC water to be our customer's favorite company. I know that we don't have a quote unquote "competition." We're the only people who serve water wastewater services, but that is not a thought that I wanted our customers.
At the top of their mind. And then, okay, speaking of mind, I think one of the ways we move the needle is by changing the mindset, that monopoly mindset. It's not about you just what you get, because this is the way we've always done it. That is not the way that I want to have our customers perceive us.
And don't certainly don't want them to feel that way. And we can't afford to do business as usual. Our product is under attack every day by bottled water and filtration companies. And so we have to be relentless about out-innovating the competition cause that's our competition. And then none of this gets done.
We don't move any needles. We don't make any difference unless we're working hard, the hardest working people in the water business. We've worked 24 7, 365 days a year to protect public health and safety and provide that clean, safe drinking water that always meets the strictness of federal standards.
World-class is also zero water quality violations, and we've done this consistently every single of our 103 years in existence.
Mahesh: I'll tell you, Carla, there are four things that I heard from you. There's many of course, on this topic, smart risks. Yes. Alternative revenue source using private companies and how to delight, the customers and how to beat a bottled water competition.
Not something I normally hear from water utility leaders. So it is reflecting the no limit upbringing you had. That's the way I see it. Okay. That's amazing. Yeah. So,, I commend you for how you're looking about this water business. I want to switch topics. I heard quite a bit, you know, as I was researching about optimizing your infrastructure and it's a huge infrastructure, which you're upgrading in every possible way. Can you give me one example on how you're optimizing it?
Carla: So I think that this is one of the things that we do in a world-class way. We have a new tool. It's a pipeline replacement tool called the optimizer and it dramatically upgrades our water main replacement process. It adjust the criteria that we use to determine which new projects to start.
It has criteria like looking at the costs, the constructability, the level of service, the social impact and data from our stakeholders. Like what are our counties' plans and paving issues. So all of these things using this optimizer system, I think is one of the critical ways that we are making a difference in terms of optimizing our infrastructure.
I know for a long time, many people, including us, have used the failure based ranking system for deciding what new projects to do. But I think this method can sometimes be inefficient and, and reactionary, but using the optimizer, we're getting ahead of the issue and trying to figure out how to best use those limited dollars that we have.
Mahesh: Got it, using science as a way of determining the best way to fund. Yeah. So let me switch the topic. You talk a lot about simplify and focus. That's a hard subject when you have a complex stuff organization in which you operate, right? How are you having your organization focus? And can you give me an example of how this is helping your team?
Carla: So Mahesh I also have one other word that I like to add to that simplify and focus is connect. So simplify, focus and connect. You went right to focus. So I'll go right to focus. Focus is about concentrating on the priorities and, you know, Fairly easy for us to do, because we use our strategy. We have a strategic plan and we test the things that we decide to do, but whether or not it's something we've identified to do in our strategic plan.
So the focus is not as hard as you think, because everything is coming at you, right? There's all kinds of things going, but then at the end of the day, you have to sometimes take a step back and ask the question. Is this part of the strategy? Is it really? Or is it important? And those important things you have to get the urgent things done they're in your face, but the important things I think you must get done as well.
And you asked me about the focus, but the simplify piece is just as important because it's related to the focus. You cannot get focused if you're focusing on everything. Cause that's not a focus. Right. So you have to figure out in the simplify piece. What is it really about, you know, the bureaucracy, are there unnecessary complexities that you need to rule out?
Is this really an optimized process and, so we make those determinations and figure out how can we just really get what we need to do down to the things that really matter. And then that gives rise to focus. And then the connection is kind of the fun piece. This is how you bring everything together. It's where we collaborate.
And you know, everybody can get around to what we need to do because they understand that together we're stronger and together we can get more done. So we look to our partnerships with schools, other agencies and all of that to make the whole thing come together. And then we also feel an obligation to have our customers be a part of this.
So we do extensive outreach. And even during a pandemic, we pivoted to a virtual outreach. Involved our customer base and we want our customers to work alongside with us and understanding what we're doing. We don't want to do things in their neighborhood and they not be a part of it. And having an opportunity.
And then if all else fails, we have a fail safe. We have something called a customer advocate, which we hire people to advocate for our customers. So if a customer is having difficulty getting their points of cross, the advocate helps to go to bat for the customer's position.
Mahesh: You know, that sounds like you know, how the banks hire white hat hackers so they can hack the banks as if the really bad hackers are trying to hack. It sounds like you have cthe ustomer advocate so that they can represent the customers and challenge the way you are interacting.
Carla: Exactly.
Mahesh: I'll tell you what the "simplify focus connect" really resonates with me because in my own organization with my own team, I have a similar... I call it standardize simplify and scale. That's what reflects our business. Right? You've got to standardize everything and you've got to simplify and you've got to scale. Cause if you cannot scale, it's always dependent on a few individuals.
Carla: Exactly, exactly. And you're building your company to last
Mahesh: That's right..
Carla: So you build it to last, you've got to make sure that there are systems in place that are going to ensure longevity.
Mahesh: I'll tell you. I learned that through Reid Hoffman, Reid Hoffman was one of the co-founders on LinkedIn and he wrote a book on a scale and blitzing, and I think it's really critical for utilites.
Not because you're trying to scale to expand, but you are trying to scale. So that is independent of the individuals who are inherit at every level in the organization easy to find that spec, easy to run the project, right. Easy to determine the cost and rates, et cetera, not make every one of the work activities, a scientific exercise.
And that's one way I think water utilities should focus on how to scale.
Carla: I love that concept. I'm gonna have to read up on that.
Mahesh: Yeah. I will send you the link on that. There's a podcast on it as well. Now I want to talk about climate and water. These two words are highly interdependent. Climate and water and its impact as well understood. We all know that now whether it's floods, droughts and everything in between. What is your roadmap to driving a resilient system that can sustain this climate change for the next foreseeable future?
Carla: So WSSC water is addressing climate change resiliency in two ways.
First, a adaptation of future climate related flooding in our service territory. We're going to do that by upgrading our critical assets. And then secondly, we have an aggressive reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions, and we're going to do that by utilizing renewable energy and energy efficient strategies.
So we've spent the last five years analyzing all of the future effects of climate change. We are projecting a hundred year flood elevations in our 2065 timeframe and we're planning the modification of key assets in our water filtration, water resource recovery, and a water pumping and wastewater pumping sites to prevent future flooding.
And we're also upgrading key assets in the next few years. The upgrades into work that' already programmed at those sites. And we also developed climate change design guidelines for new and existing facility renovations. And we're going to be using those flood elevations developed in early climate change data projections for river rain and coastal flooding.
And we've been actually on a steady path for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. We've been accomplishing that by using wind solar and hydro power, as well as replacing inefficient assets with energy efficient equipment and through onsite power generation. We have plans at our new bioenergy plants and we're currently in the process of constructing that and that's going to be our Piscataway water resource recovery facilities. So excited about that.
Mahesh: It sounds like you've been getting ready for the last five years. Right?
Carla: We have. We have a strong energy manager and our whole program has been in existence. We've been building on that for years and years and years. And this is just one more step in that game plan.
Mahesh: What is interesting is that you're laying the foundation so that in 50 years from now, it is way beyond our lifetime on this place.
The people will admire the fact that you built something that could sustain a climate change. Just like we admire now, people who've built 50 years ago, an infrastructure for sanitation water. Right?
Carla: Right.
Mahesh: And it can get lost in time, but it is a significant moment of what the impact of these planning and design guidelines are you're laying out.
Well, listen, I want to talk about change. Change, and I've asked this question before with your peers, change is an important word when it comes to changing how utilities operate, which you talked about, smart risks, changing, how residents consume water change in how politicians think about water.
Infrastructure is an underground out of sight, out of mind, concept and change in water rates, which you talked about being stagnant on and on and on. Right? How do you drive change management in this environment, in which you operate and in the organization that you lead?
Carla: So this, Mahesh, is one of my favorite topics to talk about. Before I talk about driving change, I want to talk about how change is normally experienced.
Change is normally experienced as something we want to resist. It's something we want to reject. And in that regard, things are happening to us, but we switch and you flip the script, where you're driving change, you're actually being proactive. You in fact, have embraced the change and are being a game changer of sorts.
And I think that. People who drive change, have the ability to think about a new imagined state. And so I think one of the most tangible ways that I drive change here at WSSC Water is with our strategic plan. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows what the strategic plan is. Every single person in the organization has an opportunity to add to the strategic plan, to comment on the strategic plan, to make sure that we're reviewing the trends that are happening in our sector and around us and developing the strategies we need to really be world-class now, and in the future. Driving change is really about having people be included and buying into it.
And you can't really buy into it if you haven't been included in it. So I think driving change is easy here because everybody knows what we're doing, what goals we're going for. And so I'm not the only one driving. There's a lot of people driving and that collective force is creating the change that we want to see in our utility,
Mahesh: I think at one point you mentioned very eloquently, which I call it a slightly different set of words is don't let change come to you. You go to change. Right. And what I liked and what I learned today, which is really important for my own personal as CEO leading an organization is that you're using strategic plan as a tool to drive change.
And I love that. I've never heard that before. Having operated at so many boards and leaderships. So that's a fantastic concept.
Carla: So Mahesh, somebody once told me that strategic plans sometimes become SPOTS, a strategic plan on the shelf. Our strategic plan is anything BUT on the shelf, it's in our hands on a daily basis, being used to guide our daily decision-making and our movements going forward.
And everybody knows what it is. And you know, what gives me great delight is when I hear any employee, any H2O person quoting things from our plan, they can do it because they're living it. They're using it every day. It's not on somebody's shelf not getting done.
Mahesh: That's very smart. Very smart. I think that's worthy of an op-ed article in my opinion.
Okay. So not only because you're passionate about the topic, but how you're going about driving it, you know, that change. Now you are, and I admire this topic, quite a bit, that I'm about to ask. You are playing a significant role and driving woman in stem. And I can tell you, my wife is a woman in stem. She's a Silicon valley tech executive.
We've hired several women engineers that have truly been strength to our organization. My son's fiance's is stem, so I really appreciate and admire this. What are the gaps today in women in stem and how are you helping close the gap?
Carla: So I love this topic. I love your change topic, now love this topic, because it's women's history month.
Mahesh: That's right.
Carla: Yes. Women's history month. So we got to give,some attention,, some time, and attention to the women. I'm seriously passionate about diversity and inclusion. And so one of the biggest gaps that I see is the lack of women in leadership positions. Take my WSSC water as an example. After I joined WSSC border in 1986, I had nine different jobs. And in many of those jobs, I was the first woman to do those jobs. I just think it should be different. It should be different. So what I'm doing to try to switch gears there is, really making myself available and approachable. And that's the first thing. It starts with me. I think sometimes gaps come because people don't see how they could be a certain place.
And they're hesitant to reach out and see. You know, figure out how to bridge a gap. So then I think the other way is that we have created so many different programs and opportunities to expose women and girls to opportunities in STEM. We call it actually STEAM now, cause STEAM is like we're in a water company.
So we, got to put the steam in, right? And A stands for the arts. And I love adding the arts to STEM. Because that stimulates creativity. And I think the beauty of the science and the technology with the arts and creativity creates innovation. So we've migrated to STEAM and some of the programs that we have initiated to expose more women to STEAM activities. We have to introduce a girl to engineering. We do summer camps. We have our children's water festival. We always partner with the Girl Scouts and do different activities with them. Of course, our internship and taking your child to work day and all that stuff.
We do all of those things and we're in the schools to expose women and girls to the sciences and tos all of the STEAM aspects of STEAM. So science, technology, engineering, the arts and math.
Mahesh: I like the STEAM because, you know, iPhone is a perfect example of STEAM because of science and technology. And it's the art and the beauty of the phone itself.
Right. So I think adding the a in it is quite significant. Yeah. There's one thing common between you and I, as I was researching it, it is the emphasis you put in self-development, okay? I could relate to this topic because everyday I'm a different person than what I was the day before, because I'm striving to something better space.
You're constantly evolving as a person. Right. And as a leader, what are the three traits that are totally different about you than a decade ago?
Carla: You know, this was a little bit hard for me, Mahesh. I had to really think about this a little bit, but I can tell you that the things that are different about me first, I compete with myself.
That I don't worry about what others are doing and how they're advancing. In the last 10 years, I started doing vision boards and vision journals. Well I started with the boards, and then I migrated to the journals. And the reason why I migrated to the journal was so that,,as I sussed out the vision for my future, I'm able to do pulse checks every so often, meaning I write notes in that journal about how I'm doing with those goals.
And so it's interactive. When I did the board, I didn't want to mess up the board by writing on a board. It was too pretty! So I didn't want to mess it up, but with the journal, I can really get deep and explore. And challenged myself. Am I really on the track with the things that I think I need to do to make myself a better person?
And then the second thing I will say is that. I'm really convinced that I don't need to know it all. I would love to know it all, but I don't need to know it all because number one, I think I'm better when I'm operating in my strengths. And so I'm operating in my strengths, always doing the things that I know, get the results.
Right. And then I build teams to fill in the gaps of things that I don't do well. So I'm not trying to do things that I know I don't do well, so I don't have to know it all because I can fill the gaps with those people who do it better than me. And there's so much beauty in what we can create together.
And also, I feel like I win more. I win more because I'm not struggling to do something. That I know I'm not that good at it. Then the last thing I'd say is, and probably this maybe should have been, I don't know, probably first, that I do connect more with my family and friends than I have the first part of my career.
The first part of my career, I was just so incredibly focused on, what's the next thing. Now I could still do that, but I can do this. Not leaving out the things that are near and dear to me and in my heart. So I'm much better at creating opportunities to connect with family and friends, send them a card,, do something to connect,
Mahesh: RIght, no, that is a terrific evolution. And your second point, really interests me. It's taking the pressure off your back, that you have to know it all. You know, and the first point is almost like Usain Bolt. He only compete with himself, right? You're not trying to compare and contrast. You have a goal and you want to better yourself.
So I love, I love these evolutions. I want to ask you a last question. As we sum up this, it's been a great conversation. I believe you have so many positive elements and I'm not saying this because you're on this podcast, Carla. I just learned so much through this discussion which is terrific for me, almost a free learning, so to speak, but can you describe the qualities of the next generation water leader?
What specific skills they need to have to create the 21st century water system?
Carla: Let's just say a couple of things. Mahesh. One thing that I know has been really good for me. And, you mentioned a book that you've read that gave you the scaling idea. One book I read a long time ago was Stephen Covey's the seven habits of highly effective people. That is just like, foundational for me as a leader. There's seven habits, but there's three that I know I practice daily. One is to begin with the end in mind, because it helps to visualize what your outcomes are. Two is put first things first. That's like the focus that, you know, in my simplify focus that connect, but put first things first and put your energy where it matters the most. And then the third thing is thinking "when, when." So everyone feels heard, everyone feels valued and we find solutions to problems. So many things can be at an impasse, but you want to always move past that to, "What is the solution? What is the result we're trying to get?"
So to me, I think any leader can be successful in any industry, any sectorif you have the right habits. And in terms of skillsets, that would say, maneuvering political situations because they're extremely complex and it's nothing scientific about it. To me, it's harder than science or engineering or anything like that, it's so unpredictable.
And so figuring out how to maneuver in politics is how to understand it, how not to be discouraged by it, how to move through it. And when you lose, be like Nelson Mandela, and he said, I never lose. I always win or learn. So if you could take that from a situation you're going to be on top. And be a good money manager, figuring out how you could be creative with the resources that you have, because there's so many challenges that require resources.
So you got to figure out which ones are the priorities and how to spend that money. And people skills. Maybe that goes back to the maneuver and the politics. But to me, these things are just at the heart of what skills you need. And I can't end this conversation or, this question without letting you know that sometimes... you've heard of CPR, right?
That's cardiopulmonary, resuscitation, that's lifesaving. But CPR that sometimes I have to perform on myself when I need reviving.. Yeah, it's called confidence, persistence and resilience CPR.
Mahesh: That's really fascinating.
Carla: Know what you know. Confidence is: you know, what you can do. Don't get down on that. Persistence is keep plowing through. And resilience, you know, it's always time for a comeback,
Mahesh: right. You know, it's very interesting when you described what should be the traits of the 21st century water leader, being people skills, money manager, how to maneuver politics.
And politicians that can not be an engineer, (laughs)
But the very few is what I'm saying. Very few engineers can evolve to this skillset. It's like, you know, there's a whole new class of career paths, which is health administrator. So a doctor may not be able to know how to run a hospital system, but a health administrator knows how to do it. And I understand that.
So it's important that we understand from your point what the next generation water leader skills should have, because for those that are listening, I want to evolve. These are some of the skill sets to pick up.
Carla: The reason why I went to get my MBA actually is in human resource management specifically was because I felt like I was missing something.
I had the engineering degree, but I felt like there was something else that I needed in order to advocate for the people that I was leading. And I think this rapt sense of that, so engineers can have the basis that is needed for next generation, but I think we always have to be figuring out what else it is.
You know, maybe it's not a pure area of study. Might be something else we got to add on there. Right.
Mahesh: By the way, I'm an engineer. So I get it. I understand. So as we wrap this conversation up, if I just sum up this outstanding discussion over the last 40 minutes, 45 minutes, you are a no limits leader, taking smart risks, looking at private companies and how they delight the customer, using strategic plan as a way to drive change.
You are passionate about STEAM, which is a next generation evolution of STEM, women in STEM. And it really evolved as a leader, you know, spending more time at family and friends. I think you have an amazing perspective, not to say that you're running one of the top organizations in the country.
So I leanred a lot. It's been terrific ,Carla, to have you as a guest here. And I look forward to talking to you more.
Carla: I love it. Thank you, Mahesh. This has been such an honor and a pleasure to share and talk with you. I love your questions. They made me think, and I hope that somebody listens.
Mahesh: I never said it's easy and it's more Barbara Walters style understanding what's in your mind?
So I want to thank you for being part of the show.
Carla: My pleasure. Thank you.