Daniel Arbour, President and CEO of Oshawa Power, took over an organization built for reliability, not performance, the default posture of a regulated utility that has historically held a monopoly and faced little competitive pressure to change. Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast, spoke with Arbour about how he moved Oshawa Power from what Glenn called a fulfillment-led culture to a performance-led one. When a CEO needs frontline staff to actually own a culture shift rather than comply with it, Arbour’s method is to ask why a process exists, let the person doing the work propose the better method, and let that same person predict the result: since taking over, Arbour has driven change across more than 90 percent of Oshawa Power’s major systems, and the company now recruits more people than it loses.
This episode is for CEOs stepping into a legacy or monopoly-style organization who need frontline staff to genuinely own a shift from a fulfillment-led culture to a performance-led one.
Key Takeaways
- Daniel Arbour shifts legacy organizations from a fulfillment-led culture to a performance-led one by asking frontline staff why a process is done a certain way, then having them propose and commit to a better method themselves rather than mandating change from the top.
- Arbour scaled Shell’s mobile fueling unit from himself and one other employee to more than 450 employees across 25 U.S. states in three years during the pandemic, later expanding into the UK and partially into India.
- Arbour carries a “four P’s” framework, People, Product, Performance, and Process, from Shell Mobile Fueling into Oshawa Power’s company and personal scorecards.
- Oshawa Power has changed over 90 percent of its major systems since Arbour arrived, condensing what used to be five- to ten-year system change cycles into one- to two-year cycles.
- Arbour is deploying AI first on the customer-facing side of Oshawa Power’s business, while taking a deliberately paced, fast-follower approach internally until the company resolves conflicting data sources into a single source of truth.
How CEOs Can Shift a Legacy Culture from Fulfillment-Led to Performance-Led
Arbour’s method for culture change starts with a single question directed at the frontline: why are we doing it this way? When the answer is that it has always been done that way, he follows up by asking whether it still needs to be done that way. If the employee has a better method in mind, he asks them to describe it, and then asks what result they think that method would produce.
That sequence is the mechanism, not a soft gesture. By the time an employee has proposed the alternative method and predicted its outcome, they have effectively designed the change themselves. Arbour holds that this is what makes the change stick: the employee becomes part of the performance shift and the culture shift, rather than a recipient of a decision made above them. He has run this approach from line staff up through his executive team.
The evidence for the approach shows up in Oshawa Power’s infrastructure and in its people. Arbour has overseen changes to more than 90 percent of the company’s major systems since he arrived, with roughly one and a half systems left to modernize, producing a more digital operation with less paper and faster access to information. On the people side, Oshawa Power runs annual staff surveys, a practice Arbour brought over from Shell, and engagement and loyalty have grown to the point where the company is now recruiting more people than it is losing.
How CEOs Can Scale a Team from a Handful of People to Hundreds in a Few Years
Before Oshawa Power, Arbour was tasked with building Shell’s mobile fueling business in North America essentially as a startup inside a much larger company. He started with himself and one other employee. Within three years, during the pandemic, that team grew to more than 450 employees, delivering across 25 U.S. states at its peak, before Arbour also launched the business in the UK and partially in India.
Arbour credits a frontline mentality, shaped by an earlier stint in the Canadian Armed Forces, with helping him manage that pace of growth without losing control of quality or culture. The military experience taught him to give direct, frank feedback and to correct course quickly and in the moment, a habit he carried directly into how he coached a rapidly expanding team through a multi-country buildout.
How CEOs Should Handle Loneliness at the Top by Building the Right Team Around Them
Moving from Shell to Oshawa Power changed the shape of Arbour’s peer network. At Shell, he had a larger internal community of peers to draw on. At Oshawa Power, he has fewer, and he has worked through what he calls the loneliness at the top directly with his board.
The shift in his own personal development has been to stop treating idea generation as his job alone. Arbour’s standard now is that it is not incumbent on him to come up with every good idea, only to make sure the right people are around him to generate and execute those ideas. That standard was tested directly during a recent regulatory filing, a process that put Oshawa Power’s decisions under formal scrutiny and required Arbour and his team to become sharper about documentation and rigor, even when questions about decisions made in good faith felt uncomfortable to answer.
How CEOs Should Sequence AI Adoption Between Customers and Internal Operations
Arbour is deploying AI at Oshawa Power in a specific order: customers first, internal operations second. On the customer side, the goal is not simple self-service, but self-reliance, giving customers the tools to understand their bills, their usage, and the incentives available to them as they move through the energy transition, whether they sit on the regulated or unregulated side of the business. Arbour is starting there because it is where Oshawa Power has its strongest historical data to work from.
Internally, Arbour is deliberately pacing AI adoption rather than moving quickly. Oshawa Power currently has an enterprise AI tool that helps with documentation and materials such as board presentations, but broader operational AI use is governed by a board governance committee and a defined set of AI guardrails. The reason for the caution is specific: years of system change-outs have left data spread across multiple systems that do not always agree with each other, and Arbour wants a single source of truth before scaling automation on top of that data. Given Oshawa Power’s size, he describes the company as a deliberate fast follower rather than a first mover, even as the industry’s pace of system change has compressed from five-to-ten-year cycles down to one-to-two-year cycles.
What Scaling CEOs Can Take from Daniel Arbour’s Leadership
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Let the frontline design the change | Ask why a process exists, then let the people doing the work propose the better method and predict its result, so they own the change instead of receiving it | At Oshawa Power, this approach reached from line staff to executives and helped drive changes across more than 90 percent of the company’s major systems |
| Frontline feedback discipline scales headcount fast | Fast feedback, coaching, and instant correction in the field let a CEO grow a team quickly without losing quality control | Arbour scaled Shell’s mobile fueling unit from himself and one employee to more than 450 employees across 25 states in three years |
| Build the team instead of carrying every idea yourself | Loneliness at the top is addressed by putting the right people around you, not by generating every answer personally | Arbour credits leaning on his team and board, sharpened further by the rigor a recent regulatory filing required, with easing the isolation of moving from Shell to Oshawa Power |
| Sequence AI by data readiness, not ambition | Deploy AI first where the data and stakes support it, and hold off on broader operational AI until data sources are unified into one source of truth | Oshawa Power is deploying AI on the customer-facing side first while taking a paced, fast-follower approach operationally until conflicting data sources are resolved |
Quotes from This Episode
- “In the end, what it does is they actually become part of that performance change and that culture change.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
- “I was a startup CEO.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
- “It’s just to make sure that I have the right people around me.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
- “We’re starting with the customer before we roll it back.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
- “What we’ve done in the last three years is change five decades worth of systems.” — Daniel Arbour, President and CEO, Oshawa Power
Frequently Asked Questions
How can a CEO shift company culture from fulfillment-led to performance-led?
Daniel Arbour shifts legacy organizations by asking frontline staff why a process is done a certain way, then having the employee propose a better method and predict its result. At Oshawa Power, running this approach from line staff to executives helped drive changes across more than 90 percent of the company’s major systems and improved employee retention.
How can a CEO scale a team from a handful of employees to hundreds in a few years?
Arbour grew Shell’s mobile fueling business from himself and one other employee to more than 450 employees across 25 U.S. states in three years, later expanding into the UK and India. He credits a frontline mentality drawn from his military background, giving direct feedback and correcting course quickly, with keeping quality intact during that pace of growth.
How should a CEO sequence AI adoption between customers and internal operations?
Arbour is deploying AI first on Oshawa Power’s customer-facing side, where the company has the strongest historical data, to help customers become self-reliant rather than just self-served. Internally, he is taking a deliberately paced approach, governed by a board committee and AI guardrails, until the company resolves conflicting data sources into a single source of truth.
CEOs 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, there are two ways to go further: Apply for Executive Coaching | Apply to Be a Guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast
