What was it like serving as executive assistant to Canadian PM Jean Chrétien?
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“McAdoo, come here. This is how things are going to work.”
The voice and heavy French-Canadian accent was that of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and he was having a first one-on-one with his newly-appointed executive assistant, Michael McAdoo, in his oak-panelled office.
For McAdoo, who recalls the conversation almost verbatim a couple of decades on, it was both instructive and a reminder of how far he had come from his days as a trainee journalist. What he'd expected to be a brief “detour” working at the Canadian parliament at the start of his career had evolved into something more enduring - but only because he managed to live up to what Chrétien expected of him.
“I remember he was sitting at his desk, which was the original used by Wildred Laurier, Canada's first French-speaking prime minister,” continues McAdoo. “He told me that ‘because we have worked together for three years you know me pretty well. So let's say that in a typical day you will have to make ten decisions for me: eight times you'd do exactly what I would have done. Great. The ninth time you will do something different, but that would be OK. The tenth time you will do something I would not have done and I will be mad as hell. But I will back you anyway. Because if I don't back you ten times out of ten, your word means nothing, and all ten decisions will come back to me.'”
For McAdoo, this shows the importance of supporting your team. “When you build a team, you have to back that team,” he says. “Although Chrétien did add that if the one time out of ten become three or four, ‘then we will be having a different conversation' - meaning I wouldn't be working for him much longer!”
McAdoo's two-year stint as executive assistant - which followed four years working as a legislative assistant in parliament - served as the foundation and training ground for a long and eclectic career, one which has seen McAdoo work at the interconnection of corporate strategy, public policy, and international geopolitics. He is clear, though, that many a vital lesson was learned during his time working for Prime Minister Chrétien - partly because of the significant responsibilities it entailed.
“In the Canadian system, the executive assistant has full control over the prime minister's schedule, his paper flow, and travels everywhere with him for continuity in those functions,” he explains. “Even when he took personal vacations with his wife and family, I had to go with them and be in an adjacent hotel room with secure communications - just in case.” But it wasn't only about schedule management - McAdoo also had to prioritise which people and what paper the prime minister should see.
“What I had on my desk was everyone else's top priorities,” he adds. “But as executive assistant you have to have the judgement to know what to let through and what not to let through. I had to make sure that the urgent did not overtake the important. I'd have urgent items on my desk all day long, but I had to make sure the prime minister had time in his agenda to think about the important things as well.”
McAdoo, who hails from a family of small business owners - “this part of my career has always been present” - says that one of the most important lessons of his time in the Canadian parliament was the importance of having an organisational network to call upon. “This was a big surprise,” he admits.
“In big organisations, the value of an idea can be as much a function of where it comes from as its inherent goodness. And it took a while to learn that if you want to get a good idea moving, you need to make sure the right people like that idea and that it works with whatever else they are trying to achieve in the organisation. I also quickly picked up that when battle lines are drawn, objective analysis may have to take a back seat to political expediency.” He recalls one instance when, as a young opposition staffer, he suggested that a proposed tax rise made good business sense, and being told very firmly: “The first duty of the opposition is to oppose.”
After those two years working for Jean Chrétien - a role that was by turns daunting and exciting but also “very process-driven and limited in terms of actual content” - McAdoo decided it was time for a change, and set off for pastures new in the consultancy and corporate world.
His first port of call was The Boston Consulting Group, but this wasn't his first taste of the private sector. He had his family business experience and, while working for the prime minister, he was aware of how businesses sought to work with the government - but this rarely included meeting with Chrétien himself. “This may come as a surprise, but the prime minister didn't meet a lot of corporate leaders in his office,” he explains.
“He always tried to keep a certain distance. He once told me that he didn't want me to bring him any difficult decisions - ‘difficult decisions are for ministers, and impossible decisions are for the prime minister'. This meant that business leaders would be sent to see the ministers of trade or industry instead. Chrétien also maintained that the prime minister should deliver only good news to individuals or corporations - like the opening of a new factory. A sound approach for companies was not to go too quickly to the top - if they had built support within the system bureaucratically and politically, they were more likely to get a positive outcome from the government. If you start with the prime minister and are turned down, it is virtually impossible to get that reversed.”
McAdoo soon took to life at BCG, rising up the ranks and gaining experience with clients in Canada, the US, and Mexico. “There was a heavier focus on analytics than I had been used to in parliament, but I had six very busy and happy years there and would highly recommend it,” he says. (Good thing too, given he is now back at the firm as a senior advisor.)
The bulk of his private sector career, however, was with the global train and aircraft manufacturer, Bombardier. Over more than a dozen years with the company, he worked in executive roles in a wide range of functions, including services, manufacturing and strategy. “At Bombardier, what was a huge advantage for me was knowing how to package up information from the corporation in a way that would be useful to the government,” he says.
But it is not just about “packaging” or “repurposing”; the granular policy and political analysis is also of profound importance. “The private sector needs to understand the policy thrust of the governments they deal with and show how their operations are consistent with the policy thrust and will help the government achieve its objectives,” he explains. “It is like understanding the other side's objectives and no-go's in any negotiation. Unfortunately, most briefing notes I have seen in big companies are little more than LinkedIn profiles of the folks who are to be met. More often than not, the executive is given a one-way pitch to the government about the company's priorities, and not about how these dovetail with where the government is trying to go.”
He goes on to say that clear communication is also vital - which is where his training as a journalist came to the fore. “I was taught to pretend that my audience was an intelligent being from Mars,” he recalls. “So I had to assume that my audience had no prior knowledge of anything on Earth, but they are intelligent enough that - if you explain it well - they can keep it in mind for the rest of the story. So when I was working on, for example, a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute and was focusing on how to present the case to the WTO panel involved, I knew they were very smart but didn't necessarily know anything about aircraft. A lot of technical experts can't escape the technical language, but I tried to convey the arguments in a clear and constructive way.”
Asked why there is this gap in the corporate sector for doing this kind of analysis, McAdoo says that it comes down to the different functions of an organisation needing to work well together, and not individually. “When something good happens you can't do it alone; you have to bring in other groups from across the organisation - the people who actually do the deal,” he explains. “So your pioneering door-opening role can quickly be forgotten. But they need to be coordinated strategically because acting alone won't achieve what the corporation needs to achieve on the ground. So someone needs to be pulling the pieces together.”
Now, though, McAdoo is mixing his time back at BCG with other responsibilities, including keeping involved in his family's array of small businesses, working with a handful of startups and SMEs, and serving on a couple of NGO Boards. A busy and hectic life - but one suspects that's exactly how he likes it.
Look out for more interviews exploring “corporate diplomacy” coming soon…
