I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast. I sat down with Daniel Arbour, President and CEO of Oshawa Power, to talk about the shift most legacy organizations avoid: moving a workforce from a compliance mindset to a performance mindset without a top-down mandate.
CEOs inherit cultures built for compliance, not performance. Daniel Arbour, President and CEO of Oshawa Power, holds that the fix starts with one question asked at every level of the organization: why do we do it this way?
When a process has survived for years on “because it’s always been done that way,” Arbour’s rule is direct: ask the frontline employee why, then hand the answer back to them. The person who names a better method must also name the result it will produce. That single move turns a skeptic into the person defending the change. At Oshawa Power, this approach has pushed employee retention past attrition, with more people now joining the utility than leaving it.
I’ve watched Arbour apply this same discipline across three very different environments: a decade in retail at Loblaw, a stint in the Canadian Armed Forces, and sixteen years at Shell, where he built a mobile fueling business from himself and one employee to 450 people in three years. He brought all three into Oshawa Power, where he now runs a regulated utility through a culture shift he calls fulfillment-led to performance-led.
This episode is for CEOs inheriting a legacy or regulated organization who need to move an entrenched compliance culture toward performance without losing their team’s trust.
Key Takeaways
- At Oshawa Power, Daniel Arbour shifted the organization from a compliance culture to a performance culture by asking frontline staff why a process exists, then handing ownership of the fix back to the person who proposes a better method, turning that person into an advocate for the change.
- Oshawa Power has replaced more than 90% of its major legacy systems since Arbour took over, consolidating five decades of fragmented data into a single verified source of truth before extending AI into internal operations.
- Daniel Arbour runs Oshawa Power on four aligned measures, people, product, performance and process, that connect the company scorecard to every individual employee’s personal scorecard.
- Arbour sequenced Oshawa Power’s AI rollout customer-first, launching self-service and usage-transparency tools before automating internal systems, because customer-facing tools carry the lowest operational risk in a regulated utility.
- A recent regulatory filing forced Oshawa Power to sharpen its documentation discipline and consolidate conflicting data across newly replaced systems into a single verified source of truth.
CEOs Convert Frontline Resistance Into Ownership of Performance Change
Daniel Arbour, President and CEO of Oshawa Power, did not announce a culture change when he arrived at the utility. He asked a question instead, over and over, at every level of the organization.
“I would challenge to ask the question of, why are we doing it that way?” Arbour told me. The answer he usually got was that it had always been done that way. He would ask if the process needed to continue that way. Often the employee already had a different method in mind.
That is the moment Arbour treats as the actual work of culture change. He does not implement the idea for the employee. He asks what result they expect it to produce, then lets them own that answer.
“In the end, what it does is they actually become part of that performance change and that culture change,” Arbour said.
This pattern started for Arbour in the Canadian Armed Forces, where he learned that direct, specific feedback builds more respect than a softened version of the same message.
“You can be firm but fair with people if you are encouraging them to do their best,” Arbour said.
At Oshawa Power, this question-first method has reached every level, from line staff to the executive team, alongside a rebuild of more than 90% of the utility’s major systems. Arbour ties the shift to a practice he carried over from Shell: surveying employees annually, addressing the highest-priority concerns they raise, and repeating the cycle every year.
CEOs Rebuild Their Own Role Around the Right Team, Not More Ideas
Scaling past an internal peer network changes what a CEO is actually responsible for. Arbour described the shift directly: moving from a company where he had colleagues who understood the business internally, to a utility where that peer group is smaller and the isolation of the top job is real.
“It’s no longer incumbent upon myself to come up with all these great ideas. It’s just to make sure that I have the right people around me,” Arbour said.
That shift gets tested under regulatory scrutiny. Oshawa Power recently went through a regulatory filing, a process Arbour described as one that puts every assumption and every piece of documentation through direct challenge. He said the experience sharpened how precisely the company documents its own decisions, because a regulator questioning the work can read as adversarial even when both sides are trying to reach the right outcome for the organization.
That same rigor showed up when Arbour’s team replaced five decades’ worth of legacy systems in three years. The consolidation surfaced a problem most CEOs scaling a company will recognize.
“We’ve had data all over the place, and not all the data is correct or the same,” Arbour said.
Fixing that meant establishing one verified source of truth before asking the organization to trust the data behind it, the same standard Arbour now applies to AI adoption.
CEOs Sequence AI Adoption in Regulated Industries by Starting With the Customer
Arbour splits Oshawa Power’s AI strategy into two tracks: customer-facing and internal operations. He starts with the customer on purpose.
“We’re starting with the customer before we roll it back,” Arbour said. Regulated utility customers have two core interactions with the company: the lights turn on reliably, and the bill is accurate. Arbour’s AI rollout targets self-service tools that give customers clearer visibility into their own usage and billing, deepening a self-reliant relationship rather than replacing service with a chatbot.
Internal operations move at a different pace, because the stakes are different. Oshawa Power runs physical infrastructure and regulated data, not just a customer app.
“What we do, frankly, is very important. We can’t just have our facilities and our data and our system exposed in the wrong way if we don’t set this up correctly,” Arbour said.
Before automating internal processes, Oshawa Power built a board governance committee and a set of AI guardrails, then addressed the fragmented data problem uncovered during its system overhaul. Arbour describes the company as a fast follower on AI, watching what larger, faster-moving organizations learn first, while still compressing utility technology cycles that used to run five to ten years down to one or two.
What CEOs Can Take From Oshawa Power’s Culture and AI Playbook
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Ask why, then hand back the answer | When a process persists only because “it’s always been done that way,” CEOs ask the frontline why, then let the person proposing an alternative define the result it should produce before implementing it | At Oshawa Power, this approach turned line staff and executives into advocates for change and pushed retention past attrition, with more employees now joining the organization than leaving it |
| Sequence AI by risk, not convenience | CEOs launch AI in customer-facing, self-service tools first and hold internal, safety-critical systems back until governance and a single verified data source exist | This sequencing followed the discovery of conflicting data across the five decades of legacy systems Oshawa Power replaced in three years; establishing a single verified source of truth and a board AI governance committee came before AI touched regulated internal operations |
| Rebuild around the right team, not more ideas | As a CEO scales past their internal peer network, the job shifts from generating ideas to building a team capable of generating them | This shift, paired with the documentation discipline forced by Oshawa Power’s most recent regulatory filing, carried the leadership team through a process that tested every internal assumption directly |
Quotes from This Episode
- “I hate the term retail as detail, but it really really was.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
- “The last drop of fuel won’t necessarily be delivered from a retail station.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
- “Transitioning from myself and one other employee to over four hundred and fifty employees in three years.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
- “Those AI data centers, which frankly strip the grid of any surplus energy that we might have because they demand so much power.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
Frequently Asked Questions
How do CEOs shift an organization from a compliance culture to a performance culture?
CEOs start by asking frontline employees why an existing process still exists, rather than mandating a new one. When an employee proposes a better method, the CEO asks them to name the specific result it will produce, then lets them carry that answer into implementation. Daniel Arbour used this approach across every level of Oshawa Power and reports that retention has moved past attrition as a result.
How should CEOs introduce AI into a regulated, safety-critical business?
Sequence AI adoption by risk rather than by what is easiest to deploy first. Daniel Arbour rolled AI into Oshawa Power’s customer-facing self-service tools before touching internal operations, because customer interactions carry lower risk than physical infrastructure and regulated data. Internal AI use waited for a board governance committee, defined guardrails, and a single verified data source.
What changes for a CEO who no longer has an internal peer network to rely on?
The CEO’s role shifts from generating ideas personally to building a team capable of generating and executing them. Daniel Arbour described this as central to his own development at Oshawa Power, alongside a sharper documentation discipline forced by a recent regulatory filing that tested the company’s assumptions directly.
Executives Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Careers
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits. With 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital, Glenn helps leaders scale their companies by scaling themselves first. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
