Francis McGuire’s Next Act
If you met Francis McGuire, “introvert” may be one of the last words you’d use to describe him.
But according to Myers-Briggs test, he is one. It’s a characteristic he has no qualms revealing, though nobody ever believes it.
“Getting up and talking to audiences, I do it all the time. But I think about it for days and when I finish I’m drained,” he says.
“I hate cocktail parties. I love a dinner, though. Dinner with four or five people and you get to chat a bit about all kinds of stuff. I love that.”
But interacting with large groups of people was something McGuire had to get used to over his 15 years as president of Major Drilling, one of the world’s largest drilling services companies that’s headquartered in Moncton.
“It was an $800 million company operating in many countries around the world and so it was a very typical business that goes up and down quite a bit,” says McGuire.
“I’d say about 30 per cent of my time was spent dealing with investors and shareholders, bankers, board of directors. Then probably 50 per cent of my time on human resources, because basically, you have people working for you all over the place that really make things work. Then 20 per cent general was management, I guess.”
Naturally, the job involved a lot of travelling around the world. But as McGuire approached 65, it was something he was growing tired of. In 2015 he retired from the company.
“It wasn’t a pure retirement, my wife won’t let me do that,” he says. “I turned 65 then and I had been there for 15 years and certainly there’s a lot of travel. At the end of the day, the offices were in Moncton, I lived in Fredericton, so I was constantly living in a suitcase and that just gets very tiring.”
Though tired, McGuire didn’t plan on being stagnant for long. While some former presidents of global companies may choose to retire on an island somewhere, McGuire still wanted to keep both feet in the business world. He has continued full-force with his role as chair of the Wallace McCain Institute and is still an active member of the New Brunswick Business Council. He also sits on the board of four private companies: Major Drilling, Industrial Alliance, Shaw Group and Populus.
“It allows me to keep a bit of a perspective, but not travel like I used to,” he says.
McGuire is also an investor and mentor, things he does out of pure interest and because he thinks they’re important.
“I’ve invested in 10 or more companies who haven’t done so well, or have actually failed,” McGuire says. “But it was important to invest in startups and even since I retired I’ve worked with three or four of them quite actively. Not much actively now because you give them your input, you work with them and after a while, you’ve given what was really useful.”
“That’s interesting too because you have to understand their business and as it turns out, the companies I work with are all over the map. It keeps your curiosity fed.”
The fact that most of his investments aren’t reaping much financial reward hasn’t deterred McGuire. It almost seems like an afterthought. For him, it’s about his curiosity and fascination with new businesses, and how he could bring his expertise to help.
“Once you invest in startups, you have to understand that nine of out 10 aren’t going to make it. One hopefully will make it, three will be struggling and walking wounded for sometimes long periods of time and the other ones, you’re going to lose your money,” McGuire says. “You do it partly out of ‘it’s my duty as a citizen to help young entrepreneurs.’ There are limits to what you want to lose, mind you, but you have to accept that.”
“Some people buy boats. I don’t buy boats. I don’t have a cottage. I do that.”
Before his time at Major Drilling, McGuire spent time in provincial politics as deputy minister of economic development and tourism under Premier Frank McKenna. He says the economic and business climate is much different from the 1990’s. He says one of the biggest struggles New Brunswick business is facing now is finding the skilled workforce to fill the jobs they have.
“I think most of it is really around the labour force. I think if you go to the business council for instance, we’ve got a lot of A-Type personalities who don’t tend to agree on much. One thing everybody agrees with is the labour force, it’s very difficult, almost impossible sometimes to find workers,” McGuire says. “So I think that is the challenge and I think governments are only starting to shift away from ‘we have to create a number of jobs’ to really understanding that it’s difficult to fill them.”
McGuire uses the IT industry as an example. More and more jobs are demanding such skills, but there are not enough people to fill them. This is no one person or institution’s fault. In New Brunswick, there seems to be a long-standing mentality that it’s the government that creates jobs and economic opportunity. Though they have a strong role to play, McGuire says the private sector and individuals have an important role too.
“I’ve always believed that the two have to work together. Take the IT industry, there are a lot of things the government can do, but entrepreneurs need to fill the gap and rise to the challenge. They can train lots of people and make sure there’s labour available, they can give tax incentives to startups. They can help with accruement. They can help,” he says.
He also argues individuals looking for work in the province need to educate themselves on where the demand is for work.
“Individuals have a responsibility to educate themselves and train themselves. It’s the way it is. If you don’t get an education, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
In the immediate future, McGuire plans to continue working on his corporate board and with more small companies and mentoring entrepreneurs. For him, it’s something he’s wired to do.
“As someone once told me, I’m an ‘infinitely curious person,’” he says.
“I’m just curious. I like to understand new business.”