The future of mobility: Insights from Roger Hunter, vice president of e-mobility at Shell

In this podcast, Heidrick & Struggles’ Björn Lindberg speaks to Roger Hunter, vice president, e-mobility, at Shell, the global energy company. Hunter shares where the energy and mobility markets are heading and how Shell is responding to these market trends from both an industrial perspective and a talent perspective. He also shares how his roles as chairman as well as his experience in acquiring a start-up have supported him in his daily work at Shell. 

Some key questions answered in this podcast include:

• (1:15) As a seasoned energy transition leader, can you share your views on where the energy and mobility markets are heading and how Shell is responding to these market trends from a talent perspective? 
• (4:29) Shell acquired an EV start-up business in the last five years and integrated them with the existing retail business. Can you describe that growth journey a little bit for us and tell us what some of the cultural and leadership challenges around that were and what did you do to overcome them? 
• (7:34) What would you say are the main cultural and leadership challenges of mobility, both today and in the future?
• (8:56) What are a couple of leadership lessons from your career in growing a new business in a global Fortune 500 company?
• (11:03) In the past couple of years you've been appointed to several boards, and, in several cases, you've also been acting as chairman. How have these experiences benefitted you in your day-to-day role?

Below is a full transcript of the episode, which has been edited for clarity.

Welcome to the Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of senior-level executive search and leadership consulting services. Diversity and inclusion, leading through tumultuous times, and building thriving teams and organizations are among the core issues we talk with leaders about every day, including in our podcasts. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Björn Lindberg: Hi, I'm Björn Lindberg, principal at Heidrick & Struggles and member of the Industrial Practice, focusing on energy transition and net zero. In today’s podcast, I'm talking to Roger Hunter, vice president, E-Mobility at Shell, the global energy company. Roger has had a 24 year career at Shell and has spent the last 10 years leading and innovating in the energy transition and future of mobility space. He leads Shell Recharge Solutions, proving EV solutions across 20 countries globally. He also chairs the Board of Connected Freight, an early-stage start-up that optimizes inner-city freight movement, and he has several other board positions as well. 

Welcome, Roger, we're excited to have you with us today. 

Roger Hunter: Hey Björn, good to be here. 

Björn Lindberg: Good to have you. Roger, as a seasoned energy transition leader, can you share your views on where the energy and mobility markets are heading and how Shell is responding to these market trends from a talent perspective? 

Roger Hunter: Absolutely. I mean, gosh, how long have you got, Björn? But let me try and do what I can in the time here. 

What's interesting about electric mobility as part of the energy transition is it’s these two words: electricity and mobility. And, really, you've basically got these two industries: a power and energy industry and a mobility industry. And certainly, as an energy company at Shell, we've got a very large mobility business and we've also got a large power business as well. So, you can see that something like e-mobility is at the nexus of what Shell’s doing in the energy transition. 

We're also seeing massive growth in electrification at an industry level, and you can see that in many areas. But, of course, you see it in transport, especially in passenger cars and vans and that really requires significant investment in public charging, but it also requires investment in private charging solutions as well. So things like fleet depots or having a charging post at the home is important. But now, to do that, you've got to be able to sell, install, and service charging equipment. That's a lot of what we do—a lot of what my team does. 

At a high level, Shell is aiming to be the global number-one EV charging company, with a very large public charging network and also a variety of these charging solutions. And I think the key is that you have to provide solutions for customers across all the different touch points in their journey, whether it’s at home or in a workplace environment or in the public domain, and that could be on a street as well as actually on a destination or on the highway. 

I think the other important thing about the energy transition and Shell is that we have to provide clean electricity wherever we can, certainly as part of the charging solution. You mentioned briefly talent in the question, and I think what's really interesting is that we've got to build talent and capability across this value chain from electricity to mobility solutions. We do think of this very much as a system. So, you know, it involves power generation; it involves energy trading; and it involves electricity supply electricity grids as well as charging infrastructure and many different types of charging infrastructure—slow charging, fast charging. But you also need some compelling customer solutions as well. And when I talk about customers, I'm talking about business customers as well as consumers. 

So, I guess that from Shell’s perspective—and this is perhaps a bit obvious—we're leveraging our customer base and our strengths that we have today. We've got assets and capabilities in both power and electricity as well as mobility. I'll give you an example of that: we've got 45,000 retail stations, gas stations, across the globe. So, you know, that's one thing to leverage, but also we are leveraging our clean electricity business as we grow our renewable business. So lots going on and, yes, talent and new people are key to this. 

Björn Lindberg: Let’s double-click on the kind of setup and growth journey of it. So Shell did acquire an EV start-up business in the last five years and integrated them with the existing retail business and your service stations across the globe to create the Shell Recharge platform. Can you describe that growth journey a little bit for us and tell us what some of the cultural and leadership challenges around that were and what did you do to overcome them? 

Roger Hunter: It really has been a journey, and you're absolutely right, we've done it over a number of years. We've made three large investments in EV charging and a couple of smaller investments recently as well, but they're all part of the mobility business. So they're in one place in Shell, and that helps us have one offer out to the customer. 

It really all started in 2017 when we made our first investment. The idea back then was to keep these acquisitions relatively separate because we wanted to learn about the business landscape as well as the culture and the agility of these companies. And then, of course, over time, you know, I carefully drove a program of integration and rebranding because we needed to leverage our strengths and capabilities and really act as one toward the customer. So it was about combining our capabilities, which is really important for scaling, and that's what we're doing. 

I guess a couple of takeaways that have been important are, first, that it has to be a two-way thing between those companies we acquire and the existing corporates. And you really do build trust by respecting and recognizing the strengths that the acquisitions bring. And I really, personally, I really wanted to avoid that feeling of a kind of takeover mentality, and I think it’s just important that we all kind of go forward with a learner mindset. I've got a couple of other nuggets, if you like, on mindset.

Björn Lindberg: Yes, please.

Roger Hunter: I think, as leaders, we need to really adopt a growth mindset for leading when it comes to these new businesses. Many of them are software-enabled; they're unproven spaces and, you know, EV charging is one of those. And many folks in Shell come from a more established mindset—I call it the dividend mindset. But I think the key point is that you do need both mindsets, both the growth and the dividend mindset, to be successful. 

I’ll say a few words about the growth mindset. You've got to be open, humble, and ask good questions, but you also have to have the right metrics and the right incentives for growth, and you want it to flourish. And I think while there are pockets of people in Shell who could do this well, we're in a much better place now that we have a much wider appreciation of really what adopting a growth mindset is. That is to say, we've got a much clearer playbook of how to lead in that space. 

Björn Lindberg: Those are very interesting takeaways from what you learned from the start-up businesses that you acquired. 

Roger, what would you say are the main cultural and leadership challenges of mobility, both today and in the future?

Roger Hunter: Well, let me build on what I was mentioning there about mindset. I think leaders need to be ambidextrous, and what I mean by that is you've got to be able to switch between the two different mindsets very quickly and you've got to be able to drive the more traditional metrics of commerciality and quick returns to shareholder and be able to couple that with a large risk appetite associated with a grown industry, a new industry. And, you know, I'm afraid that those two mindsets don’t naturally come together. I used the word ambidextrous: not many people naturally have that sort of nature, so that is a challenge. And this pace of change is going to continue to accelerate, so leaders are going to have to increasingly focus on building resilience. 

And here's the other thing—things go wrong in growth businesses, and it can actually be perceived as failure by the old guard, and so you need to be able to respond and handle that. When things don't go to plan, you've got to respond in a good way. You know, I generally find that folks who are more resilient and comfortable in their own skin are able to deal with this really well. 

Björn Lindberg: You certainly must have had a couple of failures on that growth journey, so do you mind illustrating a couple of leadership lessons of what you've learned in your career in growing a new business in a global Fortune 500 company? 

Roger Hunter: Again, this might sound obvious, but I think the big thing I've taken away from the last 10 years is that you have to start with the customer. You have to visit them, talk to them, and be really clear on what the frictions are at the customer level, whether it’s a business customer or a consumer. So that, I think that is—and look, I think sometimes corporations get a little bit lost on that and certainly at Shell in the mobility business there's a very healthy focus there—but starting with the customer is number one.

The other thing is you do have to be visionary and bold, and you've got to have resilience as well to ensure that this change happens in the corporate environment. And you alluded to it earlier, Björn, that does mean being able to take a few knocks. It's part of the job. 

I think the third lesson would be about being flexible and incredibly adaptable to ensure that the growth really happens within that corporate environment. That means bringing other people with you, spreading and ceding our accountability to others. That's what helps you move from an incubation zone out to a real mass global scale. So, you know, they're all key things.

Other things I'll put in here are, you know, always listen and be kind. We always expect to be the adult in the room and ask good questions. It’s about perspective, you know, always keep that perspective. And I find that if I give myself the time to reflect, that helps me keep the perspective. And, of course, the bigger goal is that I want to create cleaner transportation on a mass scale and want to contribute to that, so it’s good to keep going back to that, that bigger picture. 

Björn Lindberg: I’d like to look a little bit at your role as a director. In the past couple of years you've been appointed to several boards, and, in several cases, you've also been acting as chairman. How have these experiences benefitted you in your day-to-day role?

Roger Hunter: Well, I have to say a lot of the board positions are actually out of necessity. I mean, I was leading the vision, developing the strategy, and the board level is key for that. The buck stopped with me to make that happen. It’s both exciting and daunting at the same time but it really gave me a role at the board level to make the change and I think that's the important thing. If you want to make a change, you've got to do it from the top. 

I think the other thing about having board positions that’s been really helpful is that it’s helped me learn from my peers in the industry. So, I'm on a couple of boards in industry associations and I can listen to some of the struggles and challenges they have. And it goes back to the thing I said about the system—it all comes together at the system level and I think board positions really help you understand that system but also can give perspective again by engaging with peers in other parts of the value chain. 

Björn Lindberg: In your opinion, what skills and expertise should kind of modern boards seek to add as a matter of priority at this stage? 

Roger Hunter: Well, the key here, I mean this is really important, is that you've got to have this wonderful balance—it’s a balance between playing an insurance role as a board with the appropriate risk management, but also being bold and visionary and really having those strategic debates. It's those strategic debates that enable transformational change that the world needs, so you've got to get the balance between the two. I think that's critical. And you've got to have diversity on boards to enable that open challenge and to procreate. And I think the last thing I’d say is that as a board member, it is about leaning in; it’s about getting your hands dirty. You've got to be both challenging and supportive because you are a part of that senior leadership team. 

Roger Hunter: It’s interesting because I've covered a lot already, so I'm going to just give a bit of a summary. If I had to pick one out, it’s got to be adaptability. In a rapidly changing environment, you've got to have adaptability with a heavy dose of resilience. You've got to have that customer focus and you've got to focus on the people and the talent that are going to get you there. Now, I haven't mentioned all the classic stuff like commerciality and risk management because although they are absolutely key capabilities, I just think there are some areas where, you know, we need to put a bit of a sort of steroid injection and boost in order to make that happen in a corporate environment. 

Björn Lindberg: Thank you, Roger. 

Roger Hunter: It’s a pleasure. 

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About the interviewer

Björn Lindberg (blindberg@heidrick.com) is a principal in Heidrick & Struggles’ Amsterdam office and a member of the Industrial Practice.