Les Rechan is a Cool Guy

As published in the Kanata Networker February 2017 https://bit.ly/2lVxGlR 

Les Rechan is a cool guy. Let me just throw that out there before I get started.  Now let me show you where that bold statement came from.

In my next edition of Kanata North’s Top Talent, I set out to meet with Les Rechan, CEO of Halogen Software on March Road. It was a chilly, fresh afternoon with not a cloud in sight. I was excited to meet with Les. If the rumors were true, I was about to meet a “Legend” as my kids would say. 

As I wait in reception, you can’t help but notice the energy at Halogen. They don’t just sell strategic talent management solutions and services, they live it.  The office has a good vibe. The receptionist is decorating the front desk to celebrate an employee’s new Canadian citizenship. She is happy, smiling and everyone that walks by is the same. Happy people, lots of laughter. Deliberate attempts to funk up the place are evident. Walls are decorated with art by employees and customers, and covered with the company’s value statements such as “We are serious about fun. Seriously!”, “We have a passion to be the best.” and “We’re here for our customers and each other”. #Halogenlife is contagious and you can’t help but have a spring in your step as you head towards Les’ office.

Then you notice the music.  It’s just loud enough with a unique funky beat. Really? It's two o’clock on a Tuesday and Grateful Dead tunes are emanating from the CEO’s office. Les stands at a raised desk catching up on e-mails, surrounded by family pictures, and sculptures made by preschoolers. A picture of a cigar smoking French bulldog with multi-colored glasses hangs in his office. A Grateful Dead flag and inspirational quotes adorn the walls. There’s a cushion on his chair with skulls on it. The man’s office screams family matters, people matter and let’s have serious fun, seriously. He is wearing jeans with funky blue boots. His powerful voice fills the room and he carries himself with a unique, eclectic style. Yup, this has cool written all over it. 

When Les speaks, you catch a slight American accent. He was born into a family of 5 kids in Niagara Falls, Ontario then was raised in Buffalo, New York. With first generation immigrant grandparents from Hungary, as a boy he learned that hard work and discipline were the ways to accomplish what you want in life. With a passion for academics, music and athletics, good grades and a Buffalo Jr Sabres hockey career, he got into Brown University, the seventh-oldest Ivy League College in the United States.  

At Brown Les completed his Bachelor of Science in Electrical/Computer Engineering as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Behavior and Management. He remains a big believer in multi-functional education that enables you to see things from different perspectives. Hockey was always a major part of daily life in high school and in university but he speaks of being a “student-athlete” rather than an “athlete-student”. While some teammates went on to hockey careers, Les turned his diverse education into a golden ticket in the business world.

He spent his summers in the IBM labs working on PC-DOS lovable luggables, UNIX workstations and Assembler in a mainframe environment.  Upon graduation, Les moved to Chicago to work as a System Engineer at IBM, then into customer facing roles in sales, solutions engineering and management. He fondly calls this first stage of his career as Part 1: Getting Grounded. 

Those first 10 years were a time to diversify his skill set, prepare him for future roles and build relationships with mentors who could point him in the right direction. Les beams when he talks about the incredible mentors that guided him through his career. At the time, IBM was going through a significant transformation and Les was there to see the rise, fall and rise again.  At night he continued to sharpen his business skills at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, earning a Masters in Management with a specialty in Finance. Working with IBM’s incredible people, customers and business leaders while studying advanced business management at night, provided him with a deeper appreciation of what it takes to truly transform a business during tumultuous times.  

Les refers to the next stage of his career as Part 2: Going Global. With a solid foundation in engineering and sales under his belt, Les was ready to take it on the road and gain international experience. By this time he had met his future wife in Chicago and they were both ready for a big move to London. After a year in Europe and getting married, they were off to Singapore for an Asia Pacific assignment.  For IBM, Asia-Pacific was experiencing explosive growth as new travel and transportation and communications infrastructure was being built, so the region was definitely the place to be. 

“Going Global was a smart move and I have my Australian wife Meredithe to thank for that. I could have kept my head down doing 80 hour work weeks in the US but physically moving to the European and Asia Pacific regions, and learning that diversity is beauty, was a step-change for my career”, remembers Les.  And for more than just his career. His 5 children were born in 3 years while in Singapore (if you’re doing the math, that’s 2 sets of twins!).  As he remembers those intense times he pauses and looks me in the eye. “Seriously, you can’t take things for granted. When things are going ridiculously fast, you need to make sure you appreciate each moment, and that has always been a huge challenge for me. If you try to live in the moment, be present, then you can actually have some sort of work life balance, which is so important. If you let the lines blur, it can be too much.” 

Les was traveling a lot at this stage so time with his spouse and children were precious. “You have to learn to slow down while going full speed.  To come home and be surrounded by my family was so special and always helped keep me grounded.”  Les describes transforming not just as a career professional but as a human being.  He talks about becoming a better parent, a better partner and a better employee.  “Be nice and join in” are words he learned to appreciate and still tries to live by as much as he can.  He explains that “being nice” is taking the time to notice those around you and being empathetic so that you can relate in ways that really impact them. “Joining in” means being emotionally connected, walking in the team’s shoes, and being mindful of the people around you. It has allowed him to have richer conversations and maximize his fun and motivation at the same time, feeding off others. And this guy likes to have fun. 

Wanting to move his family back to North America, Les left IBM and spent the next 10 years in corporate officer roles and as an investor, board member or leader of small to medium to large sized software companies. This is Part 3: The Transformation Stage of his career.  Transforming companies, globally scaling go to market capabilities, acquisitions, partnerships, and winning multi-million dollar deals gave him the same thrills those first summers in the IBM lab gave him. He was in learning mode with a passion to compete and win in the globally competitive software business.

He moved to Seattle and then Silicon Valley. Working next to the world’s top tech companies was a transformative experience for this ex-IBMer. He became focused on how the plumbing of the software world works and how to differentiate in a crowded, fast-paced market space. Get it done now!  Close the deal today! Innovate faster! Yet there was also a new shift toward taking care of people and winning with talent happening at many companies. The groundswell towards treating employees with respect and really taking care of them, was enlightening. It planted the seeds for Les’ future at Halogen, still many years in the future.  

Then came the opportunity to move to Canada and join Cognos as COO. His family were thrilled, bought skis and signed up for ski lessons. It was another career game changer working with mentors Rob Ashe and Ron Zambonini, two tech giants with unbelievable business minds. When IBM bought Cognos in 2008, Les was back where he started, but now with an IBM that was completely different from what he had known. During the next 6 years he worked on 8 acquisitions, continuing to hone his corporate strategy, merger integration and business analytics chops.

When Les left IBM a second time, he settled into an active retirement, working with venture funds and corporate boards. But when the opportunity came to join Halogen as a board member, and then CEO, he jumped in with both feet and Part 4 of his career, as yet unnamed but is bound to be a good story, began.  With the incoming wave of millennial employees and the push for a more strategic role for HR, Halogen is at the centre of helping the HR world modernize.  The company’s products apply to every mid-market enterprise in an unsaturated market space, so it’s a race against time in a highly competitive space. Les likens it to his early days in Asia Pacific when infrastructure was first being installed and the market was transforming rapidly.  

Every day Halogen competes with the big players. Moving fast and punching above their weight is a necessity. Halogen is all about helping people bring their best to work, and enabling their best at work. And Les is no exception. He talks about finding his place at Halogen and being so excited about playing his role on an awesome and very special team.  

So what makes this guy tick?

It’s no surprise that Les is hard-driving and resilient. If he misses an e-mail, there is the moment of panic when he is worried that maybe a competitor didn’t miss that email. But he is working to better monitor himself to try to find a balance that works, which is a constant challenge for him. He used to go the whole day without eating, but now his health is more important to him and he takes it a lot more seriously (hence the banana resting on his desk). Mental well-being is just as important. Hot yoga is a favourite stress reliever. Work hard and play hard. This guy means it and tells me that you can’t be at the top of your game unless you are truly happy, energized and passionate about what you do. This also means giving back to the community, something that’s very important to Les and to the team at Halogen. All of Halogen’s CSR activities are led by employees, a group affectionately called Halogen Helps. “I’m very proud of the work H-Crew does to support so many great causes in the communities where we live and work . Whether it’s through our support for CHEO, the Royal Foundation for Mental Health, Centraide in Quebec City, or the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation, everyone rallies together and brings a lot of energy to support so many great causes. The activities we host, such as Halopalooza, the Halloween costume auction, or the Chili Cook-Off, really help bring out the very best in people, and that’s just to constantly give to those who need some support. ”

Les’ personality truly shines through in his colourful taste in clothes. At a recent Stratford Managers Executive Forum on Achieving Scale Les impressed the audience with his wisdom while his cool purple shoes had them spellbound. The story goes that when he first joined Halogen, on his birthday many people in the company honoured him with a “dress like Les day”. At first he didn’t even notice and just thought that everyone looked particularly snazzy that day!

He loves his iPhone and his Google calendar. He tries to keep his family and work appointments in view at all times. Remember he has 5 kids so it’s a jam-packed schedule. He also loves Feedly. It’s a great news aggregator app that compiles feeds from a variety of online sources.  Given his love of music, it’s also no surprise that Spotify and XM Radio are his other favourites.

But like a true member of “Team HALO” Les’ true favourite app is Halogen Talentspace. “Have you seen it?” he enthuses. “It’s Halogen’s award winning talent management solution.  We are all about unlocking happiness, passion and success at work. Everybody is top talent in their own way and this solution helps managers and professionals to not only bring out their best, but to unleash and nurture it. This is where the world is going…to on-going conversations and next generation performance management!”

Les takes me on a tour of the Halogen offices. The H-crew staff are smiling and call him by his first name. You can see his influence everywhere. The walls have been painted to make the space more colourful. Art work by employees hangs on the walls. Inspirational quotes and funky breakout rooms are also employee designed.  You can tell he loves this place and can see his pride in the team.

Fridays at Halogen are GSD days – Get Sh%&@#t Done days. That means no meetings. It’s casual on purpose which forces people to get up, go for a walk and connect. There are beer fridges in the team lounges, with actual beer in them.  In a conference room a group of people play euchre – a 15 year tradition I am told.

As I get up to leave Les’ office, I take a final look at the colourful bulldog with the cigar clutched in its paw and smile. There are good things happening at Halogen and Les is passionate about being in the moment, “right here, right now”.  But among the smiles, the colour and the energy, what really sticks with me is the music. I exit the building, jump into my car and crank some tunes, resolving to wear something colourful to work the next day. He has that effect on people.   Yup, Les Rechan is a cool guy.

Amanda Gordon is Vice President Human Resources Consulting with Stratford Managers and can be reached at [email protected]. With experts in strategy, human resources, finance, sales, marketing, operations, intellectual property and information technology, Stratford Managers helps companies achieve their business potential.