Barry Moline: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became the CEO of the California Municipal Utilities Association
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It’s vitally important to connect with your staff and colleagues. If you build relationships, people will work more easily with you. This is a universal truth that not many people understand. It’s such a vital skill that I wrote a book about it called Connect! How to Quickly Collaborate for Success in Business and Life.
As part of my series about the leadership lessons of accomplished business leaders, I had the pleasure of interviewing Barry Moline.
With 25+ years as a CEO, Barry has learned a lot about management and leadership. He leads the California Municipal Utilities Association, where he and his team work with publicly owned water agencies and electric utilities to keep the water flowing and the lights on for 40 million Californians. Barry is constantly on the lookout for new ideas, and recently wrote a book divulging the secrets that help teams get along better and quickly collaborate. In his spare time he plays hockey, which keeps him fit, youthful, and sometimes, a little pushy.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us the story about what brought you to this specific career path?
The world is serendipitous, so when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Out of college I was a high school teacher for two years, really enjoyed it, and thought I’d be a teacher for my entire career. Toward the end of the second year I became a pawn in a teacher union/school district negotiating battle, and all the non-tenured teachers in the district were given job-loss notices in the spring. Because I didn’t know if I’d have a job in the fall, I quickly applied to graduate school. That changed the trajectory of my career toward the energy and water arenas, where I’ve loved working for four decades. Serendipity.
In another odd turn a few years later after settling down a bit, my wife and I decided we wanted to live overseas before having children. We looked for a variety of opportunities in Europe and elsewhere. The…
