Lakes District Maintenance chief operating officer, Wendy Benyk was selected this year to attend the QuantumShift leadership and development program in London, Ontario.
QuanumShift is Canada's premier program for leadership development and networking opportunities for the top entrepreneurs and executives in the country.
The annual week long program was founded in 2004 by KPMG Enterprise and the Ivey Business School, and costs those selected to attend upwards of $10,000.
The selection process in rigorous, and typically takes around three to four months to get down to the final candidates.
In order to be selected, there are a number of guidelines that must be met, including having a company that is beyond the start up phase, with revenues exceeding $10 million annually.
Lakes District Maintenance's current revenues are $34 million.
There are hundreds of applicants and only 40 executives, approximately, are selected to attend the conference each year.
This year Benyk was one of 43 selected to attend.
Benyk said she learned a number of things that she could apply to Lakes District Maintenance during the week.
"Implementation of company culture, every company has a culture and we think that everyone knows what the company culture is, but sometimes it's not spread to all the employees," Benyk said, "for example we have approximately 250 employees and we work throughout the province, so my goals and my expectations may not be what the employees think they are. What I see as our culture and strategic goals, the employees may not know, so I need to refocus on that."
Class work focused on case studies, and began at 8 a.m. and ended around 10 p.m.
Benyk said the experience highlighted the fact that there is always room to grow as a company.
"If you want to keep growing as a company you need to keep progressing, if you don't you will stall and eventually disappear," Benyk said.