Mary Powell has a simple mantra: "Culture eats strategy."
Since taking over as CEO of Green Mountain Power, she's implemented a startup culture that represents a dramatic departure from a traditional utility model -- obsessing over the customer, mixing employees in order to uncover new ideas, testing out new products and re-imagining the power delivery business model itself.
She used to call Green Mountain Power the "un-utility." These days, Powell doesn't even like to talk about her company as a utility at all.
This week, we feature a live conversation with Mary Powell from the Clean Energy Trust Challenge in Chicago. She talked about her unconventional approach to managing a utility, and her outlook on how customer interaction with the grid will change.
Above all, she explained why understanding customers matters so much to people: "One of my biggest fears is being out of touch with what people want and what really matters to people."
Big thanks to our launch sponsor, AES Energy Storage: http://aesenergystorage.com/interchange