Over the last 17 years, Nick Cohen has held leadership positions in five companies, with four of them in clean energy. He's now the president and CEO of Doral Renewables USA, which is developing the appropriately named Mammoth solar project at 1.3 gigawatts. It will be America's largest utility scale solar farm. I've wanted Nick on the show since I first talked with him last year.
Overview
- Introduction - Nick Cohen’s background and leadership philosophy
- Early leadership experience and lessons learned
- Influence of mentors and family in leadership
- Onboarding and the five-minute first impression
- Why cleantech?
- Leadership styles for managing in the Clean Energy Sector
- The roles and responsibilities of an effective CEO
- Advice to new cleantech leaders
- Climate optimism based on environmental progress
Introduction - Nick Cohen's background and leadership philosophy
Mike Casey:
Hello, cleantechers, and welcome back to another episode of Scaling Clean. This is the podcast for clean economy CEOs, investors, and the people who advise them. Today I've got a highly accomplished, longtime cleantech leader. Over 17 years, Nick Cohen has held leadership positions in five companies, with four of them in clean energy. He's now the president and CEO of Doral Renewables LLC, which is developing the appropriately named Mammoth Solar Project. At 1 .3 gigawatts, it will be America's largest utility-scale solar farm. I've wanted Nick on the show since I first talked with him last year and I'm really glad I have him on the show today. Nick, welcome to the show.
Nick Cohen:
Thanks, Mike. I'm really glad to be here to talk about my career in renewable energy.
Mike Casey:
Well, let's start with that. Talk to me about your background. How would you summarize for our listeners your career as a company leader?
Nick Cohen:
If you want to be a really good leader, in my opinion, you have to enable the people around you to be successful. You do that by caring, by genuinely caring, and by looking for all the different ways that you can make them successful. And then you have to take those tools and all that enabling and ensure that you're a good listener because you're never going to be the smartest person in the room. I know as leaders it's very easy to fall into that trap to think that you're the one who knows the most. But the best ideas come from the people around you. And as long as you have that attitude that it's okay for someone else to come up with the idea, you can just listen to all of the smart people around you and then it's your job to put it together and make the decision based on as much information as possible.
And that's what defines a good leader. Someone who can listen and enable the people around them, you'll get a better result that way.
Early leadership experience and lessons learned
Mike Casey:
Nick, that's a great segue. Tell me about the first time you were somebody's boss.
If we were gonna split screen, Nick Cohen, when he first started managing other people and Nick Cohen leading now, and you and I sat next to each other watching that, split screen, what are the differences that we would see?
Nick Cohen:
Well, in my younger days, when I first became somebody's boss, I was promoted through a system where I excelled. I was very good at financial services. And so I had my way of doing things. Then I became the boss. And as the boss, I began to impart my way to the people around me. And that upset the culture of the business at the time. People, I learned, have a different approach to doing things. Your way is not always the right way for everybody. And even though it works for you, it may not work for the next guy. And part of empowering people is to observe and understand them and then allow them to do what they do best and the way that they do it best.
So my mistake early on was trying to impart my method to everybody rather than have them use their own strengths to advance their success.
Mike Casey:
Did that shift that you just articulated come about from some mentoring you got? And I'm particularly interested in the people you would look back on as your most important mentors and what you learned from each.
Influence of mentors and family in leadership
Nick Cohen:
I think the lesson I learned there was that I wasn't following my mentors at the time. My mentors were my parents. They were very entrepreneurial and they were very hardworking.
My father was an engineer and an executive and worked very, very hard. And my mother was an entrepreneur. At one point we had a Japanese restaurant in Southern New Jersey.
And no matter how difficult it was, my parents were always optimists and they always got up every day to fight and be the best that they could be.
And then when they integrated me into their business activities, the mentorship that I got was incredible because ever since then I became an entrepreneur.
But the part that I needed to pay more attention to was they were very careful not to tell me what to do for everything. They wanted me to find my own strengths.
And I think if I had taken that lesson the first time that I was a boss in my early 20s, that first experience would have gone better. And as I reflect, it's definitely something that I take with me every day, that to empower people you have to understand them. To understand them, you have to care. You have to take the time to really see what's going on and find their strengths and try to encourage them to use those strengths to succeed.
Their success is your success.
Mike Casey:
I'm just following up on that because I'm really curious. Have you found that there's a baseline period of time when you have a new employee who's reporting up to you?
You have a sense of how long it takes for you to do that listening, to do that observation so you really understand them and can use that Nick Cohen style that you've articulated?
Nick Cohen:
Mike, believe it or not, the answer is five minutes.
Mile Casey:
What? Really?
Nick Cohen:
That's how I start every introductory conversation. Every person who works for our company,
regardless of who they report to, on their first day we get introduced. And I spend most of that time listening and I communicate it to them very clearly that that's important to me.
And by the way, it's important to everyone in our organization because relationships are our core value and that's not just cheap talk. You have to walk the walk. And so that begins with the introduction. So you really have to listen. And by the way, if you're gonna be a successful leader, you need to mean the things you say, and meaning them means that you were thoughtful about it. You're not just saying it. And also that you're feeling it. So I'm thoughtful, I'm feeling it and I'm very conscientious about my approach. So it's very present on my mind because once I'm out of the picture in the day-to-day, things get busy. I want all of the people in our organization to think the same way. I want them to all be listeners and it all starts with the leadership and how I cast the first opportunity when I talk to them.
Onboarding and the five-minute first impression
Mike Casey:
So let's say I come to work for you tomorrow and I have my five-minute introductory chat. I'm not gonna be your direct report. Are there things you're listening for in those five minutes?
Nick Cohen:
Not really. If it were an interview, I'd address that in a second that it would be different. But if you've already been hired, then I'm listening to my chiefs who are telling me that this person is the right person. And I have 100 % confidence in their decisions for better or for worse. And so if they're telling me this is the person, I'm believing right away that they're the person. And my job at that point is to begin supporting the empowerment of that person. So that's how I do the introductory conversation with a new hire. Now, in the hiring process, that's different. Because relationships are our core value, that's the first and main line of my questioning in an interview because the technical skills and competency will be pressed with the supervisors who are actually doing the hiring. They're the experts in whatever the subject matter is that that person is interviewing for. So what I can do as the interviewer is to assure that this person is going to be a good cultural fit in our organization, which means they value relationships. That can the person go out into a farm field, get their shoes dirty, talk to a farmer, and actually enjoy it. Then can they come back the next day, can they go to New York to the 60th floor in a boardroom and deal with the bankers and enjoy that?
Mike Casey:
Interesting.
Nick Cohen:
When you're that person who can go from the barns to the boardrooms, then you've already cleared the first hurdle for qualifying to work at Doral.
Mike Casey:
I know I'm straying off the list of questions, but it's your fault, you're too interesting.
So, all right, so here's a question. I start day one and I am a direct report to Nick Cohen. Has Nick Cohen taken sufficient measure of Mike Casey in five minutes, or is there more like a week or two or three? What have you found as the general period of time in which you assess me as a direct report to you?
Nick Cohen:
Since you're already hired, you're already prepared to hit the ground running because we really do hire only the best. And that means you have the experience and you know what you're doing and you probably know more about it than I do. So, the key to your first day and the success of all of this is that I've done my preparation. If you're reporting to me, I have spent the time to socialize your new existence within our organization. I have lined up all of the tools, procedures, and policies in an orderly fashion that can be easily communicated to you. I've arranged meetings for you to connect with the people who are gonna be in your ecosphere. And that's really important because as a leader, remember how I was saying that we're gonna enable the people to be successful and give them the tools? Well, part of that is you need to make sure that you're fostering communication, especially in this day and age, it's a distributed workplace. If you want the best talent, you have to go to people, okay? The days of everybody relocating to a central location, are over if you wanna be competitive. You need to find the people. And by the way, in finding the people, you're also promoting a work-family balance, which is very important. When people can work from home, they tend to balance their family priorities. And we don't want this job to wreck anybody's life.
What's good for their family is also good for us and we care about them. That's our core relationship. So when that person shows up to work, we have a myriad of technical tools and we have people distributed everywhere.
We just need to make sure that the preparation is done and that everybody in the organization knows that this person is starting on a certain day. Here's their role and here's what you should be communicating to them.
So it's all preparation. On that first day, you're going to walk in and you're going to see that we were prepared.
Mike Casey:
I hear a lot of forethought that's gone into the design, if you will, of the onboarding experience. How long did it take you to get to that place? You've got such a developed, robust onboarding system.
Nick Cohen:
It's definitely something that's been evolving, but it has always been something that's been a thoughtful process. It's not something that we just delegate to somebody or the AI or something like that. No, it doesn't work that way. That's part of the design of our organization. We'll always be a core relationship value organization. That means that when people start,
they're getting the VIP attention that they need so that they feel welcome and that they get off to a good start. It's just like when you build a solar farm or you build anything,
all of the pre-engineering and design, that's where all the success happens. As much as you can do upfront the rest of it has a better chance of success. When you're dealing with people, that's especially the case, that you need to get them off to the right start and the attitude, everything starts in a good place, and then it's easier to maintain that way.
Mike Casey:
I hear that the purpose of the Nick Cohen five-minute conversation with every employee is as much as anything else to model a listening-based management style. Is that accurate?
Nick Cohen:
Yeah, I love that term. That's a great term, a listening-based management model. That's what we have and that's what we'll always have because we have to stay true to that core value.
Why cleantech?
Mike Casey:
You moved into clean energy relatively early in your career. I'm interested in what drew you to this sector and what's kept you in this sector. -
Nick Cohen:
There are a lot of careers that many of us could do and my recommendation to anybody listening to this is to try to pursue one that you feel good about. And so right away renewable energy and clean energy would be on my short list of careers that I would feel good about. I also think that the opportunity is amazing in clean energy and it has been for 15 or 20 years.
So you wanna get into a career that has a future and clean energy has always had a future. And then the people are amazing. You get the most interesting worldly people in clean energy.
When I started in this business, I started with clean coal because at that time it really wasn't a given that natural gas was gonna come along and displace coal and renewable energy still hadn't gotten to economies of scale. And it looked like clean coal was going to be the answer, that somehow we were gonna use coal in a cleaner way. And in doing that, the whole world was doing it. So it was worldly people here at home and it was worldly people abroad. Everywhere I went the people were exciting and very good-natured and had a sense of responsibility to their colleagues and to the planet. So it was just such a good career to pursue for me for all those reasons.
Mike Casey:
I don't think I've ever heard that answer articulated like that and it's really lovely. I feel the same way.
Nick Cohen:
Yeah.
Leadership styles for managing in the clean energy sector
Mike Casey:
So in your travels over the last two decades, social functions, professional or personal, I imagine that you have had reasons to compare notes so to speak with peers who have leadership positions at companies in more mature sectors. To the extent you have had those conversations and you've matched notes, what is your take on the difference of managing a clean economy company versus managing companies in more mature sectors?
Nick Cohen:
Personally, I really think that there are several different styles of management and I do think that my style of management could work in just about any industry. If you're the CEO and you really care about the people and the customers and the whole value chain and it's not just a job to make money, you will have a successful company whether it's in a mature sector or whether it's in something innovative and with a high growth possibility. The mature sectors do tend to attract leaders that are more about telling people what to do and it can work. I'm not saying that for some people that works. It's just a different style. When you get into an innovative fast-moving industry like clean energy, you get very talented people. It's kind of a top-heavy industry and the people come to the table knowing a lot and I think that if you're not a good listener or a good people person as a leader, you will lose the culture of your company and people will leave. And where I see it working at our company is that we have not had a retention issue at all. We've been very successful in getting the best people. Most of the people that we interviewed say ‘yes’. And we know that there's a lot of attrition at other companies in this business because there aren't enough people to fill all the positions. So people are not staying here for the pay. The pay is competitive, it's fine. They're staying here because they believe in what we're doing and they believe in the leadership and it's something very special.
I want people to come to work every day like their jobs. If you don't look forward to working here, we need to know why and you shouldn't stay. And so we're trying to make an environment where people look forward to working here. And I think sometimes in the more mature companies, it's a little more difficult and you tend to get people who really are there
for the benefits and the things that cause them to have to stay. I just feel like the people in our company, if we weren't good, they could go anywhere they want. And so you really have to figure out what is going to make us different from our competitors and that is caring. I want to make sure that our people are dealt with our success.
The roles and responsibilities of an effective CEO
Mike Casey:
You quit your job tomorrow and you become a lecturer at a local business school. Your first lecture describes the role of the effective CEO to your students. What are the parts of the job and the relative proportionality? Tell me the lecture overview that you'll give.
Nick Cohen:
So as the CEO, you have to be able to roll up your sleeves and be the salesman for the vision and you have to believe in where you're going and the product. You also have to understand the customers. I always say give the customers what they want. If you're not plugged in with the customers as the CEO, then you're just there doing a job. It's very easy to be an ivory tower CEO. You have a lot of pedigree. We all do and you could hang your hand on that for a while, but that is not sustainable. You've got to be connected to the entire ecosystem and you have to feel it every day. I literally wake up and sometimes in the middle of the night feeling it. I realize that's an intangible answer, but the first thing as a CEO that I would tell the class is you need to be the biggest believer and that means you have to feel it.
Of course, you have to be very in tune with the business fundamentals and that's something that if you have a lot of experience, you're that way or experience plus some sort of education background, you can be plugged in with the academics of it, but if you want to lead, your people need to believe in you and they're not going to believe in you if you don't believe in the system, the organization and the customers. That's what the CEO is all about. That's what leadership is all about. Of course, there's also discipline for policies and procedures. If you have any organization of scale like ours, you must be thinking about where are the pinch points and you have to invest in technology and you have to have policies and procedures. You have to conduct the business every single day as if it's a big business and it is. You have shareholders, you have a responsibility to everybody around you to make sure that you're accounting for things the right way, that there's accountability in your process, and that you're being very efficient with the money that you're spending. So those are all parts of the responsibility of a CEO.
Advice to new cleantech leaders
Mike Casey:
We want to be you in 15 years. What advice do you have for us? What would you say?
Nick Cohen:
I would say that, first, I hope that you'll find your way and you'll be you because what my success and happiness is, if you're in my shoes, might be a little different for you. So, try not to mimic me exactly, number one. Number two, be real with all the people around you. Do not get caught up in egos and arrogance. Okay, it will eat you alive because it's a rough world out there and you're better off making friends and building trust than being the one that's creating friction. So, if you're thoughtful about how you deal with people and you're easy to work with and you show up every day and work hard, you'll get to where I am.
Mike Casey:
This is now my favorite question from these interviews that's emerged. There, I want to know if over the years you have developed practices or habits that keep Nick Cohen operating at as high a level as a CEO as possible. And we've heard answers that range from, I make sure I go to the opera. I get up at five o 'clock in the morning and I work out. My wife and I hike every weekend. I mean, it just spans the spectrum and I'm so interested in how company leaders maintain their own performance day in, and day out. What are the supplemental things that Nick Cohen does to keep Nick Cohen performing at this high a level as possible?
Nick Cohen:
To succeed, you must find a way to have high-level thinking. And usually, that does start with a family-work balance. So hobbies are important. I try to turn my day off at some point. At six, seven o 'clock at night, I try not to respond to emails. I'll glance at them occasionally. I spend the time with my wife and my kids. I have hobbies. I like to snowboard. I have saltwater aquariums. I like classic cars. I spent a lot of time outside doing stuff. So, those things are very important because when you're doing those things, they take your mind off of all the other things. So it's very important to be able to compartmentalize and design your life in a way where you have time for high-level thinking. If you don't do that and you find yourself running 15 hours a day, like crazy, you will be eaten alive by somebody like me, okay? Because I will thank you and I will win. And to be successful, you need to be driving to be number one. I remember when I went to the Fuqua School of Business at Duke for my MBA, right before the first class, they sent you a massive amount of homework. And we walked in and on the first day, the professor said, how many of you got it all done and about half of the class raised their hands. And the other half, including me, didn't raise their hand. And they said, all right, well, you got your first F if you did all that work. Because you have to learn priorities and there's no way you could do everything that comes at you. And that was a lesson learned for half the class. And a validation for the other half of the class.
Mike Casey:
Wow, okay, all right.
Nick Cohen:
I thought, boy, that was my first day and I probably got my money's worth out of that one,
that validation, but it was very true. You just have to think about, how am I gonna think about the next big idea. How am I gonna be different than everybody else? Well, you're not gonna figure that out dealing with a thousand emails a day and trying to get involved in every chief's decision. That's where you're empowering people. I want my people to make the decision and tell me, okay? I don't have to be in every meeting. I don't have to be the authority on every decision. In trusting my people, it affords me the time to think about all the problems that need to be solved and all the new ideas that we need to differentiate ourselves.
Mike Casey:
Broadly speaking, hiring is always cited as one of the most challenging parts of leading companies. You've kind of answered this question already, but I'd like to perhaps hear a more enhanced answer. What have you learned about successful hiring?
Nick Cohen:
In this business, if you think pay and benefits are the reason people are coming to you, you will be losing out in the hiring game. People are looking for a future, a sustainable future in a company where they feel welcome and they look forward to coming to work every day. And you have to be able to convey that to them if you want them to work for you, and you have to convince them that they're gonna be successful. I think too many companies miss out on these attributes that you can bring to the table. Instead, they're just focused on the transactional or the mechanics of the business. And at that point, you sound like every other interviewer. So you need to get to their heart and it's a two-way street. They need to know that you're listening to them as well. And that really is a two-way street. And if you can convince them of that, you'll have a much better success rate for hiring people. It's all about the people. It really is. They're too smart, the workforce, they can go anywhere. Everybody's paying about the same. They're too smart to just follow the guy that's dangling the carrot. You've got to really tell them what's inside.
Mike Casey:
Do you have a go-to interview question that has stood the test of time for you? And if so, what is it?
Nick Cohen:
I do like to ask people how they would react to a customer being offensive to them. And sometimes what they say and how they react to it is a little bit of a rabbit hole, but it does give you some good insight into the kind of person that you're dealing with. And our organization, arrogance, and ego really don't get you anywhere. So we're screening for that and how you would react to somebody who is offending you personally. It does reveal a lot. It reveals a lot about your maturity, your patience, your ego, all that kind of stuff.
Mike Casey:
What's your guidance on firing people?
Nick Cohen:
So I have some pretty strong opinions about that because when you fire somebody, it's not just about the person, it's about the organization. They have colleagues, there are implications to all the people around them. And I think in corporate America, it's commonplace to just not only tell someone goodbye, but the security is waiting to walk them out. And I think you have to have more trust in people. It's a small industry, it's amazing how many people are working for somebody one day and then it's flipped, three years later it's flipped. Maybe they're a customer, maybe they're a client. I mean, the person you're firing could be your customer, sitting on the customer side in six months. So just because you're firing them doesn't mean they're a failure, they could be good at something and they just, whatever was happening at the time in their life or in your business or whatever, it just didn't match up anymore. And it was time for them to go. You could be their friend again. And so you should never burn bridges. And then I think too many companies when you escort somebody out with security, that doesn't work well. We're a contemporary company. We do things like work from home, take the maximum amount of holidays that are possible. We have the most liberal policies because we want people to have a work-life balance. And these are the things that contemporary companies do. And when it comes to managing people, including managing people on the way out, you've got to do things differently or else you're just gonna be a dinosaur stuck in the past. And as a progressive clean energy company, we're gonna set an example that we do everything in a thoughtful and contemporary way.
Mike Casey:
We like to close with two broader questions. So the first is, as you reflect back on your career to date, would you say that success in running a company is more reliant on what you choose to do or more reliant on what you choose not to do?
Nick Cohen:
It's definitely both. And each one of those depends on what's happening at the time. People around you, your customers, your colleagues, your stakeholders at every level, whether it's somebody working in a government office who has to regulate what you're doing or it's a customer buying $100 million worth of power, or it's the colleague sitting there crunching the numbers every day, they're watching everything you're doing. And they're not watching like that's their mission in life, but people notice. And it's not just the company, it's you as a person, it's all of our people. You have to be bigger than your company because you own your character, you own your reputation. And so as situations happen, how you handle them is indelible. And you can definitely discount your future by what you do and what you don't do for the moment.
So you can willfully neglect your responsibility by not doing something. And because of something was hard to do. But if you do that hard thing, people will remember you for that,
that you were the one that got out of bed in the morning and dealt with the hard thing. Also, if you're the one who did something as you thought of a different approach, okay, that'll be remembered too, that you're the one who created this opportunity, because you initiated it because getting back to, hey, I found time to have high-level thinking. So the answer cuts both ways and the gravity of it is equal. And what you do and what you don't do have equal gravity and the outcome of your success.
Climate optimism based on environmental progress
Mike Casey:
Final question. Has your work to date left you a climate optimist or a climate pessimist and why?
Nick Cohen:
I'm definitely an optimist. And I like data. And really, if you just take a couple of data points, for sure, I live in a cleaner world than my grandparents. Okay, my grandparents lived through the industrial revolution and there weren't any environmental codes or anything and they were there literally inhaling the particulate and things that you can't do today. So for sure, it's trending in the right direction and the impact that we're all having today is going to ensure that my grandchildren are going to have a much cleaner world than we have and you can track how bad the air emissions were, and back when my grandparents were working and you can see how over the past 10 or 20 years they really have improved for a lot of reasons and we saw the long way to go. Don't get me wrong, globally we have a long way to go, but renewable energy has the people, the technology, the economies of scale, the business model, it's all there. So economically speaking, there's definitely a compelling business case that the climate is going to get better as a result of the improvements that are being made. You also just have public policy and humanity doing what it can to improve the environment and the planet. So it's not getting there fast enough. There's going to be pain. We're in pain right now, it's happening every day. Tornadoes are sweeping across the country. Climate change is affecting all of us but it's not the end of the world and it's trending in the right direction.
So for those reasons, I'm an optimist. All you have to do is compare the three data points of my grandparents, me, and my grandchildren. And for sure, there is a linear relationship between the health of the planet and the time. So that's where my optimism comes from.
Mike Casey:
Well said, Nick Cohen, this has been a leadership masterclass, super rich conversation. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. So thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for this time you took with us to share this wisdom and I think we're gonna be challenged cutting this down to 30 minutes because it's some pretty rich stuff. So I'm really grateful to you and I appreciate you for being in the industry and the leadership role you have. Thank you so much, Nick.
Nick Cohen:
Yeah, thanks, Mike. I really appreciate it and I wish 25 or 30 years ago somebody would have told me if you wanna be successful, listen to the people around you and empower them. And if you do that, everything will work out. And that's the advice I would give everyone and I'm glad that your platform is offering that opportunity to the audience. So thank you very much for everything that you're doing.
Mike Casey:
Thanks for joining us for another episode of ‘Scaling Clean’, the podcast for clean economy CEOs, investors, and the people who advise them. I'm your host, Mike Casey. Our producer is Brian Mendes. If you like what you hear on ‘Scaling Clean’ episodes, we'd appreciate it if you can give us a five-star rating and leave a comment wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time we wish you all the best in your cleantech endeavors.