By really listening and creating an environment where people feel it’s safe to say hard things, leaders can learn a lot, says Terry Downes, chief executive of a Seattle, Washington-based ocean health company.
Downes joined Sealaska in 2012, a for-profit Alaska Native Corporation established as part of the US settlement with the Alaska Native people. Under the settlement, some 178 million hectares (44 million acres) of traditional homelands were returned to Alaska Natives in the form of 13 regional, for-profit corporations. Sealaska is one of them.
“Basically, the US put money and land on the balance sheet of these corporations. If you were able to demonstrate you were a member of one of those tribes, you were eligible to be a shareholder,” Downes says.
Sealaska is owned by more than 24,000 native shareholders. It was created to support indigenous prosperity and long-term stewardship of their native homelands.
Sealaska developed considerable expertise in ocean health and integrated these companies into one business unit, Woocheen, which Downes now heads up. Time spent with elders of the community helped him to understand the culture and their needs. “They taught me this word ‘woocheen’ — it means working together, but in harmony with your environment. It means having respect for everything around you, even inanimate things, and to always be aware of how you affect things,” he says.
We grew up basically in Irish culture, everyone they knew was Irish
“Woocheen’s mission is to focus on ocean health and to improve the productivity of our oceans, to get more food from them because it takes the pressure off land, to get energy from them, to heal them and clean them up,” he says.
Woocheen is now a $500 million (€500 million) business. “In our minds, it’s not something we are doing alone. I think the environmental challenge for the world is, how do we work together across racial and national barriers.” Indeed in June, Sealaska announced Antrim-based ground investigation company Causeway Geotech would join its platform of companies.
Downes was born in England to Irish parents who emigrated there in the 1950s to work. His father had left school at 12 and worked as a farm labourer. His mother’s schooling ended at 14. “We grew up basically in Irish culture, everyone they knew was Irish,” Downes says. Part of his childhood was spent in a 405-hectare (1,000-acre) farm in Sussex where he and his six siblings had room to roam. “It was paradise for a kid — rivers, woods and forests. I grew up really wild and connected to nature, and I think that had a huge impact on me.”
His father returned to Ireland when Downes was about nine and his parents divorced. He grew up between the two countries. He is now both an Irish and an American citizen and holds an Irish passport.
“My parents taught me this idea of freedom, of curiosity, to think for myself and the value of education — they wished they had an education,” he says. He studied science at Imperial College London. After a PhD at Cambridge, he joined a global construction materials business, attending the London Business School while he worked. The company had operations in more than 40 countries including joint venture partners in the developing world.
“I was working as an analyst for the board and I ended up getting sent to these areas where there was a problem. The problem was nearly always with the people in London, not with the joint venture partner, because they weren’t listening. It was always, ‘they aren’t doing what we want them to do’. It never really occurred to anyone to ask if they were actually right,” Downes says.
It was simply about listening, to be honest. Listening to what is really going on and having the ability to put the hard things on the table in a room where no one wants to hear it
His work, which took him to Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Asia and the Middle East, was about solving problems.
“It ended up with me turning companies around that were actually broken or bankrupt. It was simply about listening, to be honest. Listening to what is really going on and having the ability to put the hard things on the table in a room where no one wants to hear it. All I did was build a relationship with people that enabled them to share information with me and to trust that I would use it appropriately rather than to further myself or get them into trouble,” he says. “I think the humility of being raised in Ireland, you are not allowed to brag, that’s not done. That’s not the way people are.”
It’s his goal to address climate change, fostering an inclusive culture at Woocheen to help tackle it. Creative problem solving can only happen where people feel safe to be themselves, he says.
“It goes back to those formative years, your ego is not caught up in the opinion. You can separate the two. You are able to say the things other people wish they could say. If you are lucky enough to be white and male and well educated in America, you can somewhat get away with it I guess, but probably not everyone could do it. But I could never work in a fear-based, hierarchical company, so I figure others couldn’t either. I try to create a culture that is accepting of all.”
Woocheen’s unique ownership structure is an advantage, somewhat freeing him from the strictures faced by other CEOs. “Our shareholders aren’t institutions, they can’t sell those shares and they don’t want to and this means we can take a long-term view,” says Downes. “I know a lot of people running public companies who would love to be able to think long term but structurally, they are not able to.”
There are social problems in Alaska’s native communities, some of which are linked to pride, he says. “It’s about valuing yourself,” says Downes. “As Ireland has matured, it’s so cool to see the language revived and people truly valuing what it means to be Irish. I wanted that for these communities,” he says of Alaska’s native communities. “I figured if we can build a business that’s really inspired by their culture and they see that business operating all over the world, hopefully they will feel true pride and connection.”
