How to Forge a Successful Career in Treasury with Paul Miseré

Welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they built their careers, where they are now and where they see both themselves and treasury profession going to next. In this week's show, I made sure to get the pronunciation right. I'm joined by Paul Mizer, the Treasury Director for Emea at Medtronic. Now for those who don't know, Medtronic are a global healthcare solutions company. They're founded in 1949, been going so over 60 years. Their mission is to alleviate pain, restore health, extend life for people around the world. We'll get Paul to explain that because he's been there for a number of years and we'll dig into that as well. But as I say, there's over 160 countries basically across the world and we can talk about some of the challenges maybe health care and the industry is facing. But really what I wanted to dig into today was Paul and his treasury career. Obviously a lot of the people listening are treasury analysts, managers. Paul's actually been with Medtronic for 17 years, but he originally started in banking straight out of university. So maybe give us that and take us back to the dim distant past. But then walk us through your Medtronic career because you've just been at one company for a number of years but it's and I've seen on your resume and background, Paul, and people see on LinkedIn you've made some progression and moved through it. So take us back to your early start in treasury if you would.

Thank you Mike for the opportunity. So yeah, after completing my studies, so I have a BA in Commercial Economics and a Master in General Economics. I first started my career at Rabobank, indeed regional bank as a private banker advising private clients about their investment portfolio, mainly stocks and options. I left that organization shortly after 9 11. I only had bad news conversations and I joined Medtronic in 2002 as a Treasury analyst. To be that honest, having no clue what treasury actually had built back then. So I just started fresh. I think what definitely helped, albeit it was short, the experience in banking and working in a commercial environment. When it comes down to basically maintaining the relationship with the bankers, we somewhat talk the same language. However learned quickly that treasury in a corporate environment is a completely different ball game than working for a bank in a more commercial environment. Back then Medtronic just completed an RFP selecting one banking partner. They were already pretty sophisticated, having a host to host connection with that bank Industry standard. And they were in the midst of rationalizing their banking infrastructure in the EMEA region, which we, I have to say, since then, continue doing because Medtronic is a highly acquisitive company. So we continuously inherit all sorts of bank infrastructure from the companies that we recently acquired. Progressed indeed, from a career perspective, started leading a small team, building that from scratch when we started deploying SAP as our ERP system. So I worked actually on some bank reconciliation activities, so more accounting related activities. And back then, indeed, EMEA relatively well for short, less complex than we are organized today. So at a certain moment in time I started diversifying, started leading bigger teams in a shared service center activity. So continued having oversight on treasury, but I started adding activities like intercompany fixed assets. I've even led an external audit at a certain moment in time, which was definitely out of my comfort zone. Added cash application credit management, so more shared service center related activities.

Again, some of the listeners here, when did you first get your first leadership role? So you started and when we say way back then, we're talking you started there in 2002 and you were a treasury analyst till 06. Did you then make the first step to start to mentor people? How did you get into that? Because again, well, guys early on in their careers, you sort of four or five years. We recently interviewed Marcus Keady. He was 26 and he was group treasurer leading a team. It was like, whoa, relatively young. And he talked about some of the things. Again, for the listeners, how did you do that and how did you make that transition?

It was a bit of a natural kind of move. I did. Express but that's what a lot of people do, right? Express I want to be a people leader, but it's not that obvious. Can definitely say it is not obvious. Leading people. I started, yeah. In 2006, I got the opportunity to start mentoring, coaching an analyst as well as two new team members setting up a bank reconciliation process from scratch. So I got the mandate to basically start leading and composing a team. But yeah, the scope was emea. So for me that was definitely quite a challenge from within the team to start leading the team that I used to work with. So that was another element that was making it a bit difficult, I have to say. But yeah, in 2006 I started leading a team and then I went on to bigger teams up to, I don't know, at a certain moment, 20, 30 people, which also had its challenges. The team is now smaller, but yeah, I mean, the work continues to be the same from a People management perspective.

How do you manage 30 people? I mean, we'll talk about 12 people, but you know, surely you know, how do you do your day job and at the same time 30 people are sending you emails and or calling you boss. What do we do? Or how, you know, you're our leader? What do we do?

I learned pretty fast to work on setting up an organization, Mike, and by experience, right? So if you indeed have 10, 20 people continuously at your desk and it depends on how mature that team and those team members are as well, I learned fast that it needs some organization. So I quickly tried to negotiate and work with my hiring manager to basically elevate and empower people within the organization to become, for example, a supervisor where it made sense, right? Because it doesn't mean that if you are really, well, content wise and you're a specialist that you, per definition are also able to supervise or to lead people. So I learned pretty fast to put in a layer of supervisor supervisors in order to help me out to work on other elements like being more tactical and more strategic than just working on operations and develop people. So I really love having a right balance between definitely further developing people and taking them to the next level. But I definitely also want to work on the strategic technical part and work on projects.

And when you're talking about those people, I noticed, you know, again, the listeners would be able to look on your LinkedIn profile and seeing that you've done a number of sort of training courses and you've been coached yourself and things like that. Looking back at that training received, you know, there was development, planning for yourself, there was selection training about how to recruit people, identify people, what, what sort of stands out to you from that? What did you take from that? You know, you also did talent acquisition, which is our job, so you need to keep calling us, which is fine. But you know, how did you find good talent or what was the sort of, how did you keep that going?

I think, well, a setup with animatronic, which I'm a strong believer in, is that from a development perspective there's a 70, 2010 rule, meaning 70, 70% of your time should be dedicated to on the job training. I learned most of it by just doing it. And sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. And then 20% is coaching and mentoring from the hiring manager. And that's what I apply to my people as well. And then 10% is more formal training and that can hard skills or soft skills, that can be internal courses, external courses, e learning anything. And the latter I Think it depends on the person as well. In what kind of stage of their career are they, are they even interested? Right. It's not that you should. It should be mandatory per definition. Because I think some people don't want to do a formal training. They prefer to have 80% on the job training and 20% coaching and mentoring. So what I learned is that it depends on the person. If I look at it at me personally. Yeah, I learned most, to be honest, by on the job training and listening to peers, but also hiring managers. And I had hiring managers 6, 7, 8 now already in the past 17 years. And all, all had different characteristics and I just tried to absorb as much as possible from their strengths.

Okay, we're talking a lot about people, but let's focus a little bit more on just some of the treasury aspects if you like, because as we said, maybe, you know, more recently you did the integration with Covidian and you've done some various other bits. But talk through the treasury piece if you like. One of the questions. You know, I did pitch this to Paul before because I want to be a bit cheeky with him. You know, you've been Medtronic since 2002. 17 years is in the same company. Surely that limits your treasury views and your exposure to different ideas and ways of doing Treasury. You've just worked at one company, surely that one way. It's a Medtronic way. Thanks very much. Explain that to again, the listeners.

I mean, that's the initial perception that you may have and others may have. Obviously, as I mentioned, we are a highly acquisitive company. So we inherit infrastructures from other companies and we definitely learned from that. It's not that we immediately apply the infrastructure or the policies that we have as a company. We try to take the best out of other infrastructures as well. And we try to keep abreast of all of the developments out there as well. So I and my team members have been participating in treasury roundtables. You've got obviously the Dutch association of Corporate Treasurers. There's a regional roundtable in the southern part of the Netherlands that is being held every quarter. We attend the Euro Finance. We attend actually the NOI Group roundtable twice a year as well. So we are trying to keep up to speed with what our peers at other companies are doing as well as we collaborate a lot with our internal SAP and IT colleagues to understand what kind of innovative solutions are out there. And last but not least, we try to partner as much as we can with our main banking partners. As well, to just try to understand like what is out there, what are other companies doing that we are not doing? And what I forgot to mention, Mike, is that obviously in the 17 years that I've been working with the company, I've had a lot of team members as well coming from other companies, be it competitors, sometimes even be it from the banking industry, but also from having a corporate treasury background with other companies. Yeah. And they come with a completely different mindset as well and they pose the exact right questions. What is important obviously for me and some others that have been with the company for a longer period is to stay open minded, Mike. It's not like, okay, this is what we've been doing for many, many years. This is the right thing. We have to look into the mirror as well. I need to stay as open minded as possible. All there as well.

And in terms of then, you know, over that time, what would you say sort of the standout moments, the career highlights, if you like that. Well, we implemented this and we got a big award for it, or you know, we took this team from here to there or you know, what are the things that, you know, jump out at you, that you sit back and go, that was pretty good. That was, you know, what would you say?

It was definitely shortly after the Covidian acquisition in 2015. Medtronic is a company that offers a lot of responsibilities to a lot of people in the organization. And I was being asked to actually lead three integration efforts at the same time.

Which was definitely relaxing feet up.

Yeah, exactly. So what stands out there is that I recommended and led an integration effort to move cash application activities from one location to the other. What was successful is that we implemented shortly before that an automation tool in order to make that happen. I was being asked completely out of my comfort zone to centralize credit and collection function in the region. So we managed in a relatively short period to move 50, 60 hats to a central location. And last but least part of the integration effort we were doing, we called it a legal entry integration project by basically merging the various sales organizations we had so Covidian and Electronic into one. Which meant, and I let it from a Treasury perspective, not overall, but yeah, that was definitely something that immediately came to my mind when you asked.

We actually probably skipped past them again from some of the listeners. They won't know Medtronic if you like. So with Medtronic perhaps again explain if you would, what Medtronic, who they are, what they do, but also how that then impacts on Treasury. You know, how do you then provide your treasury services as a Treasury team to the group, you know, because, you know, if you're doing it for a FMCG company and you know, a drinks company, there are lots of different treasury pressures to healthcare companies. So maybe you explain that a bit.

Healthcare indeed. Medtronic annually 30 billion of revenue. Having a market cap of 150 billion by now. Global provider of medical technology and therapies. Indeed. Mission is to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life. Initially, I have to say that was not something that I was immediately being triggered by. But if you learn, if you work for this company for a certain period, this definitely gets into your DNA. This is why you are working for this company. And perhaps it sounds corny, but it's definitely something that Medtronic spends a lot of time on as well. If you look at how we contribute to this, it's a specific market. So we've got sales organizations all over the place, meaning they need the basics, right? Bank accounts, credit facilities and so on. We are in a business where we deal with a lot of public hospitals, meaning that we need to participate in. So we work together with our businesses directly, business finance, to make sure that they have all the facilities in place to participate in those tenders. And then you can think of we need to issue zillions of bid and performance bonds in order to even participate in a tender like that. The foundation is basically laid by us as a treasury organization for all the sales organizations, but also the manufacturing plans and robots facilities that we have in the EMEA region to basically not worry about anything when it comes down to banking. So they don't need to worry whether there's sufficient cash to pay their bills, payroll and so on. They don't need to worry how to collect cash. That is the primary responsibility for us as a function. If you know that we are in more than 25 countries, we've got over 150 entities. That is definitely something that requires an infrastructure and we've been working hard with the regions to make sure that that.

Is up and running and the integration with the global treasury. Because the global treasurer is based in the US and you're in emea, how does your global function work? The global sort of passing it around the world, as it were, or what's the sort of ethos there.

So I report into the treasurer in the U.S. indeed, in the U.S. we've got centralized functions like capital markets, who takes care of the issuance of the external debt, commercial paper, knowing though that that is being run through entities here in Europe. So we are responsible for Electronic plc, the mother company which resides in Ireland, and we've got quite some presence in Switzerland and Luxembourg as well. And all of these transactions basically flow through these entities. So our collaboration is key with capital markets, but also with the corporate Avex team who takes care globally on hedging our Avex exposures. Again, the majority of the exposures are in emea. So again also there a lot of collaboration is needed with the Avex team. Also knowing that we as a function here in EMEA are running global multilateral netting process also there. We take care of a lot of data as well as exposures and we need to collaborate with the team in the US as well as the cash and liquidity management team in us. There's a whole bunch of activities. I'm not sure we are not following the Sun Mike from a cash and liquidity management, but there is definitely a handover occurring at a certain moment in time. So yeah, we are on calls with them constantly. There are regularly meetings to just make sure that we are as aligned as possible. Time zone differences.

And you mentioned earlier in the show that you integrated from your very early days you integrated very directly with your banking partners and that was obviously a key driver. Now we talk in previous shows about treasury technology being a big driver, but you've talked there a bit more about the people that actually push the buttons, which is just as important. But where have you seen treasury develop over the time you've been in it so far and then going to next? What have you seen as the key developments and see as the developments going forward sort of thing?

When I started in 2002, definitely somewhat a sophisticated setup with a host to host connection. But I mean I was sending wires through a modem, right. And using a floppy disk to encrypt it and sending fax instructions for export deals kind of things. Right. I've seen and we've been implementing quite some technology here and there to further automate that and streamline these activities. And I think we will continue doing that. We are in the midst of rolling out globally a tms, a Treasury management system. What I've done foresee and that that's something that my opinion is that we would like to get rid of all those recurring activities as soon as possible by implementing the TMS and other functionality. Which means also potentially a change in the mindset of team members. Right. I would foresee us being much more involved in analytics and insights, providing that not just to other team members within the organization, but also to other Functions like shared services. When it comes down to having more facts based analytics and insights on working capital initiatives like in AP and AR than we are doing today, I think we have access to so much data but we haven't been using it to the fullest. I think there are still lot of value add that we can show towards the organization by further automating recurring and operational activities.

And how do you measure that success then from there? So you know, what are you, what standard are you holding yourselves up to? Is it that right, we want, you know, we straight through process. Ours took us three days, is now, you know, a few hours, but then you want it a few minutes, few seconds or is it where does the value out come from? What sort of benchmark are you using to measure yourselves?

I think when it comes down to KPIs as a liaison, that's something that we've definitely been focusing on in the past years. I think we're pretty up to speed. When it comes down to straight through processing on payments and how to deal with collections. I think that foundation has been laid. I think there's still some room for improvement. But we're close to, I don't know, 99% in most of the cases I think where we, and that is all about automation and make it more efficient. Right. Where I think we can add value as a function is to start using that data and to really, it's a bit of a buzzword to really business partner with other functions like business finance, but also shared services to even further improve working capital. For example, are there ways to increase our terms to vendors? Are there ways to more easily and hopefully earlier collect cash from our customers? Can we contribute by talking about, I don't know, other areas like supply chain financing, leasing. I mean we recently acquired a business that is highly capital intense. Is there a way where we can contribute for you to do, to improve your ways of doing business with our.

Customers and just, and I don't want this to be an unfair question to you because you might not know but when I first started In treasury recruitment 20 plus years ago, I felt that, and I only learned it in more recent years that I think treasury was its own worst enemy. It became this specialist area and I saw a lot of treasurers at the beginning, I think sort of trying to get their pay rises because hey, we're specialist treasury, we're over in a corner and we do this. But in the time that I've seen it, you know, treasury got closer and closer to the business to say oh guys, actually we can help you rather than, you know, be that black box treasury guys or the black box tax guys in the corner, you know, want to be more integrated, you know, with that integration and things, you know, you sound like you guys have done it well. But what would your comments or thoughts be on that? Would you say that when you first started Treasure was this specialist secret area, smoke and mirror sort of thing or what's. What have you seen in that perspective?

I can definitely relate to that. Although as a region, we've always been part of the financial shared service center, Mike, and that definitely helped. So there was already from the beginning a close collaboration with functions like the accounts payable department, but also the credit and collections department. So it was not that we were on an island. I think back in the days we actually collaborated much more with shared services than with departments like Tax and Legal. I think it's now the other way around. There's much more interaction and collaboration with Tax and Legal to some extent finance, lesser extent accounts payable. So the shared services, because most of the work has already been done. I would say at the same time though, we as a company are also penetrating into new markets. It's not the Germany, but it's like Egypt, think of Egypt and Pakistan. And that that definitely brings along new challenges which makes us collaborate again much more with shared services than before. But I see where you're coming from. It's considered same as the tax department, considered a bit as a niche, a specialized function. I think as a result of that, we do have a seat at the table for most of the initiatives. But I also see the constant need for me and others to explain why we are adding values to the organization. Yeah, that continues to be a topic.

So as we, you know, come towards the end of today's show, we keep this about half an hour, 40 minutes, someone's daily commute, as it were. Someone will look at your. We'll put your a link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so people can, you know, potentially connect to you, they'll only connect to you if it's useful for him. You know, don't, you know, don't get annoyed. But joking aside, if someone looks at your profile and says, do you know what I'd like that career? You know, start banking but then develop my treasury path to, you know, similar role to Paul, what sort of elements of advice or what would be the advice you give to them? We talked earlier. You've got people management, you're in a successful company. We've got the 70% on the job training. But you know, what are the things that you would pick out maybe on a more personal level to tell people, is it, you know, go get some training, is it to integrate with, you know, the local act or you know, what are the key things that stand out for you, would you say, as we, you know, come towards today's, the end of today's show, if you have.

A general interest in Treasury, I mean you should reach out to people like me and others or within your organization to get a better understanding of what that exactly entails it if you want to be successful in treasury, but I think in general can be in finance or any other function. I think what I experience at east is that you shouldn't be afraid to take advantage of an opportunity when offered right. At the same time though, it needs to feel right. I'm a bit of a, I'm sensitive to that. I mean I've for example left certain departments where activities were explored that were not close to my heart, Mike. But the team was and I also experienced it the other way around. So it could even be within the treasury function that there are some elements which I don't know. It's not having an immediate interest but it could be that there are other challenges that makes it really appealing for you to step in to do overcome those challenges. It can be from a people management perspective but can also be that there are opportunities to further automate and work with vendors and bankers on really innovative solutions. If you look at treasury, if you are interested in like working with banks, working with SAP IT on really sophisticated and innovative solutions, I think then you should pursue a career within Treasury. I mean as I just said, having a seat at the table for many, many projects, that is definitely an element that energizes me. But yeah, again I continue mentioning team but that is definitely something that is close to my heart and makes me come to the office every day.

And this integration again when I do each the end piece of every show I sort of write down some, some people have, you know, do this, do this, study this or whatever. But again what I'm getting for you is like integrating with those partners, working with them and they will make you successful and obviously makes the job more interesting, which is great.

Yeah, absolutely.

Paul, amazing thank you for your time today. Really appreciated it for listeners. Again we'll put it in the LinkedIn show, the rather LinkedIn connection, rather you connect to Paul. As I say, if it's gonna be useful, Paul or remote for me say thank you very much. Continue with your very successful career, obviously, as a recruitment firm ourselves. Sometimes frustrating when a client has a really successful 17 year career and won't keep moving around. You want him to move because you know, we need him to move sometimes. But you know, we'll keep talking. One day, maybe one day, you know, we'll get you. Thanks for your time.

Time will tell. Mike, thanks for your time.

Thanks very much.