Andrew Agatep
Chief Financial Officer, Slate Grocery REIT
Toronto
I joined Slate as a Controller and have had the opportunity to assume more breadth of responsibility over time. In December 2019, I took on the CFO role at Slate Grocery REIT. The firm is always looking for creative new ways to manage the growth of this business and develop its people. Ultimately, you get recognized and rewarded for your output. I think I’ve been successful because I’ve delivered consistently and introduced different solutions to various business challenges.
“Slate centers its culture around collaboration and the sharing of best practices, and it is rewarding to see our team members’ ideas come to life in a meaningful way.”
The best advice I ever got was to get comfortable dealing with ambiguity. It did not resonate with me at first, but it turns out that ambiguity gets more relevant as you progress in your career. Ambiguity presents an opportunity to drive change and influence outcomes. During my time at Slate, the company has grown exponentially, and we have had to find ways to get ahead of potential challenges or roadblocks – and sometimes that meant no playbook or precedent, just finding the best idea we could agree on and executing. I can think of one example where we knew our quarterly cycle should simply take less time. Originally it was eight weeks, but our team really challenged the status quo, carved out efficiencies over time, and eventually reduced it to three weeks
The talent we have is really what brings Slate to life. Our culture is centered around collaboration and the sharing of best practices, and it is rewarding to see our team members’ ideas come to life in a meaningful way. I enjoy working with a diverse group of intelligent and dynamic people. We work shoulder to shoulder across departments to better understand needs and think about how we can add value. There is no 'working in a silo,' there are a lot of resources to draw from and that help us do our job better.