Mike Ketcheson leads Colliers Project Leaders' national strategy in support of federal departments, including the Department of National Defence, from his post as Vice President. Eighteen years into his career at the firm and ten years deep in defence and security, he shares how he got here, what keeps him up at night, and what has him most optimistic about the road ahead.

HOW DID YOU START OUT IN THIS INDUSTRY AND HOW HAS IT BROUGHT YOU TO WHERE YOU ARE TODAY?

I started my career in high-tech sales, but when the recession hit, I found myself looking for my next career. Real property had always held a certain appeal for me. My grandfather was an architect, and growing up I admired the fact that he could point to buildings he had been involved in and talk about how those buildings worked for the people who inhabited them. I found that very inspirational.

When the opportunity came to change careers, I was drawn to real property because I saw the built environment as something fundamental: it provides the foundation that allows people, organizations and communities to thrive. That path eventually brought me to Colliers Project Leaders, where I am now in my 18th year. I started as a Business Development Manager in Ottawa, which gave me the opportunity to understand our business from the client's perspective: what they were trying to accomplish, the challenges they faced, and how we could bring the right people and expertise together to help them succeed.

Over the years, my responsibilities have grown and evolved, but that fundamental idea has stayed with me. Real property is about much more than buildings; it is about creating environments that work for people. In many ways, that takes me back to what I admired about my grandfather's career: the ability to look at something tangible and know that you played a part in creating a place that will serve people and communities for years to come.

WHAT IS YOUR ROLE AT YOUR ORGANIZATION TODAY?

Today, I am responsible for leading our business strategy around core focus areas of investment by the federal government. Currently, a major focus of that investment is defence and security. I focus my time on our national strategy in support of federal departments, including the Department of National Defence, understanding where government priorities and investments are heading and working with our regional and sector teams across the country to identify where we can best support our clients.

I remain actively engaged with clients at a strategic and relationship-management level. A big part of my role is listening: understanding the challenges our clients are facing and then bringing together the right people, expertise and capabilities from across our organization to help solve them. Ultimately, I see my role as connecting the dots between our clients' priorities, our people and the capabilities we have nationally.

WHAT WAS YOUR MOST CHALLENGING MOMENT?

The biggest challenge in our business has been navigating the changing priorities of our clients in response to major economic, political and global events. Over the past two decades, we have experienced a recession, COVID, multiple changes in government leadership and, most recently, a significant shift in Canada's relationships with other countries. Each has created uncertainty for our clients, our business and, importantly, our people.

As a management team, this has required us to continually reassess where the market is heading, refocus our priorities and adapt how we deliver our services. We prioritize remaining closely engaged with our clients to understand how these changes are affecting them and where their needs are going next. Perhaps the most important lesson has been that managing through change is as much about people as it is about strategy. Our responsibility as leaders is not simply to position the business to respond to change, but to support our people through it.

WHAT WAS YOUR A-HA MOMENT OR EPIPHANY THAT YOU THINK WILL RESONATE MOST WITH OUR READERS?

When I joined Colliers Project Leaders 18 years ago, we were a relatively small organization with fewer than 100 people working across five offices. Today, we have more than 800 people working across Canada and are part of the broader Colliers family in Canada.

As the business has scaled, my role as a leader has changed with it. My A-HA moment was recognizing that leadership in a larger organization is less about what you can accomplish individually and more about finding the leverage that exists across the organization: our people, expertise, services and partners, and connecting those capabilities in ways that create greater value for our clients.

Scale brings complexity, but it also brings tremendous opportunity. The challenge for leaders is to break down the barriers that naturally develop as organizations grow and make it easy for people to collaborate across offices, disciplines and businesses. For me, leadership today is increasingly about making those connections: bringing the right people and ideas together and creating opportunities for them to accomplish something that none of us could achieve on our own.

WHAT IS THE ONE THING THAT HAS YOU MOST FIRED UP TODAY?

We are living through an exciting period of tremendous change. A series of global events has fundamentally changed the environment around us, and I have been inspired by how Canadians have responded to that adversity. There is a renewed sense of purpose and urgency around strengthening the country and investing in our future.

That has translated into an unprecedented level of investment in Canadian infrastructure, including the rebuilding and modernization of our defence infrastructure. The scale of what needs to be accomplished, and the opportunity for our industry to contribute, is extraordinary. For someone who has spent much of his career working with the federal government and in real property, it is a fascinating time. We have an opportunity to help build infrastructure that will serve Canadians for generations.

WHAT IS THE BEST ADVICE YOU RECEIVED?

I have been fortunate to have many great mentors throughout my career, but there are two pieces of advice from my time at Colliers Project Leaders that have really stayed with me.

The first came from our former CEO: never become complacent. He often reminded us of the Will Rogers line that even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you're not moving. I have always liked that because it is a reminder that past success is no guarantee of future success. You need to remain curious and sufficiently nimble to evolve as the environment around you changes.

The second came from our current CEO and is something I keep close to my heart: model the behaviour you want to see from your team. Leadership isn't just about what you say or what you expect from others. People pay attention to how you behave, particularly when things are difficult. Together, those two pieces of advice have shaped how I try to lead: never stop evolving, and never ask something of your team that you aren't prepared to demonstrate yourself.

WHAT IS A HABIT THAT CONTRIBUTES TO YOUR SUCCESS?

I continuously work on my relationships with others. I intentionally carve out time to check in with colleagues and clients so that I understand where they are, not only in their professional lives, but in their personal lives as well.

It doesn't have to be complicated. Simple, regular touchpoints build stronger relationships, trust and, ultimately, happiness. They also help me understand what is important to people, when someone may need support, or when there is an opportunity to help. Those relationships give me energy and help me start each day with a positive attitude. I've learned over the years that investing time in people is never wasted time.

WHAT IS YOUR PARTING PIECE OF ADVICE?

Life is short. If you're not happy, make a change.

Change can be uncomfortable, and it is easy to stay with what is familiar. But some of the most rewarding opportunities in my life have come from being willing to take a different path. My own career in real property began because circumstances forced me to make a change. Looking back, that unexpected turn led to a career and relationships that have been tremendously rewarding.

You won't always know where a change will take you, but you owe it to yourself to keep moving toward something that gives you purpose, challenges you and makes you happy.

WHAT PEOPLE OR ORGANIZATIONS DO YOU BELIEVE BEST EMBODY THE INNOVATION MINDSET?

The organizations I admire most are those that put their people first. To me, innovation isn't just about adopting the latest technology or developing a new product. It is also about recognizing that people and their needs are constantly evolving, and being willing to evolve with them.

Different generations and groups of people need different types of support, social environments, tools and ways of working. The organizations that listen to their people, understand those changing needs and continually adapt to meet them are the ones I believe demonstrate a true innovation mindset. When people feel supported and valued and are given the tools and environment they need to succeed, they bring greater commitment, creativity and energy to their work.

HOW IS YOUR ORGANIZATION APPROACHING CHANGE WITHIN YOUR INDUSTRY SECTOR?

Our approach is rooted in how we develop and support our people. We have incredibly talented teams, and we believe our greatest opportunity is to create an environment that allows that talent to thrive. We have taken a strategic view of things like work-life balance, building high-performing teams based on trust, and creating value for our clients through long-term trusted-advisor relationships. We want success to come from the collective strength of our teams rather than being overly dependent on individual "rainmakers."

That is a different approach in an industry where productivity can too easily become synonymous with increasing billable hours. We believe sustainable high performance comes from investing in people, giving them opportunities to grow and creating an environment where they are energized by the work they do. Ultimately, our competitive advantage isn't simply the services we offer. It is the quality of our people, the strength of the teams we build and the relationships of trust they develop with our clients.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST IMPEDIMENTS TO INNOVATION IN YOUR INDUSTRY SECTOR?

The biggest impediments to innovation are imagination and time, in that order. People get busy. Our industry is very good at solving the problem immediately in front of us and continually improving how we do things. But meaningful innovation requires us to occasionally zoom out and ask a more fundamental question: are we solving the right problem in the first place?

There is an old observation that the electric lightbulb wasn't a continuous improvement of the candlestick. Sometimes the breakthrough comes not from making the existing solution incrementally better, but from imagining an entirely different solution. Creating the time and space for that kind of thinking is difficult in a busy professional-services environment. Innovation can't simply be something we ask people to fit into the margins of an already full day.

HOW HAS INNOVATION BECOME ENGRAINED IN YOUR ORGANIZATION'S CULTURE AND HOW IS IT BEING OPTIMIZED?

We are an ISO-certified company, so continuous improvement is deeply embedded in how we operate. We see that discipline as the foundation for innovation: it encourages people throughout the organization to continually look for small ways to improve how we work and how we serve our clients.

I sometimes think of it as keeping up with "innovation inflation." If the world around you is continually getting better, standing still actually means falling behind. But there is another benefit. When hundreds of people are making small improvements every day, the organization becomes more efficient and capable. That can create the space for some people to zoom out from the day-to-day and look for the bigger shifts: the ideas that don't simply improve an existing process but have the potential to fundamentally change how we work. For our organization, we need both: the discipline of continuous improvement and the imagination to occasionally challenge the model itself.

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES, BUSINESS MODELS AND TRENDS WILL DRIVE THE BIGGEST CHANGES IN YOUR INDUSTRY OVER THE NEXT TWO YEARS?

There is no doubt that technology strategy will play a significant role in our evolution. AI, data and digital tools are already changing how professional-services organizations work, and that will accelerate.

But fundamentally, our people are still going to be responsible for helping our clients deliver real assets in the real world. Technology can make them more informed, more efficient and more capable, but it doesn't replace the importance of judgment, relationships, collaboration and experience. For that reason, we believe one of the most impactful business-model changes will be how organizations attract, develop and retain great people. We are investing in a model that puts people development at the centre: building strong teams, creating opportunities for people to grow, and giving them the technology and support they need to do their best work. Technology will undoubtedly change the tools we use. The bigger opportunity is using those tools to amplify the capabilities of our people rather than simply asking those people to produce more.