139 - Paul Avey - Chief Executive Officer of Concept Environmental Services

Arete Podcast with Richard Triggs

In this episode, I interview Paul Avey, the Chief Executive Officer of Concept Environmental Services, a provider of fluid process solutions to the resources, biogas, utilities and agricultural industries. Paul shares to us how he came to be passionate about leading people from his young formative years, to joining the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and his corporate journey that led to him becoming CEO of Concept. Paul is also a member of my Champion’s Forum and shared his experiences with the group on this episode. He also gave us a glimpse of how his organisation adapted to the challenges of the Coronavirus, and their strategic initiatives and process. Paul’s current professional responsibilities CEO of Concept Environmental Services for roughly 1 year now. His main responsibility is to solidify the business with what they've got now and take their core technology called Concept Tank and develop markets outside the coal and gas industry. "We've got a fantastic company, really good people, really stable financially, with a really game-changing core technology that we can employ in different parts of the world." Paul’s personal background - where he is from, early years, and his career journey. Paul believes that him being in the Air Force as a cadet engineer and having 40 people working for him at that time, was a real character-building experience for him. Paul transitioned into manufacturing and understanding what and how to manufacture quality components. How 3D printing fundamentally changes the manufacturing industry. What motivated Paul to get out of the military? "It was always my goal to get into the general economy, rather than, you know, I didn't see myself as being a 20 or 30-year military veteran. So I was keen to see if I could get into corporate life." Paul bought a kiwi fruit orchard in New Zealand after his military service, which still operates today He also became a maintenance manager for a chemical plant making cleaning chemicals for the dairy industry before becoming the manufacturing manager for that site. His general manager offered him work and relocation to Australia. He and his family have now been living in Australia for more than 22 years now. Paul shares his leadership style when he was in the military, as he handled people older than him at that time. "It doesn't matter what rank you've got on your shoulder. You just got to treat everyone as a person to get the best out of them." It was very important for Paul not to have a rank-dominated team structure at that time because that wasn't effective and could compromise their work. He didn't have to dramatically change that style of leadership when he got into the corporate world. "What absolutely floated my boat was to run organisations and be responsible for an outcome from a sales and marketing and an execution perspective to maximise profit for organisations." Paul’s career progression, the company he had worked for, the people who helped him professionally to reach where he is right now, his professional experiences and challenges with these companies, and more. Paul Avey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulavey/ Concept Environmental Services on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/concept-environmental-services/ Concept Environmental Services Website: https://www.conceptservices.com.au/ Richard Triggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtriggs/ Arete Executive Website: https://areteexecutive.com.au