Eric Miller

Co-Owner and Principal, PADT, Inc.

by Eric Miller

Q: What most notably stands out about your leadership style or what is an example of leadership success you can share with our readers?

Over time, I’ve adopted a consultative leadership style where I gather input from any team I’m leading and then make decisions based on that input and my knowledge and experience. This was especially helpful for our company when we negotiated the disruption caused by the pandemic. To go beyond surviving and actually growing while keeping our employees safe during that period, I counted on the advice of experts outside and inside our organization and my own moral compass and business sense to meet a steady stream of incoming challenges.

Q: What impact has COVID-19 or the disruptions of the past 18 months had on you as a leader?

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the destructive power of “magical thinking” to me. As vast numbers of people adopted positions around the pandemic and how to deal with it that had no basis in reality, I started to notice those same people had an identical approach to business matters.

When dealing with typical business challenges, their perception fit what they wanted to believe rather than the reality of the situation. I no longer assume that what such people tell me is what is going on, and if their untrue viewpoint is consistent, I remove them from the picture.

Q: What do you feel we can be doing as a business community to empower economic growth here?

We have made considerable strides in connecting, but too many companies still decide to go out of state for products and services they can obtain here. Directories and portals don’t work. We must make a concerted effort to get out into the business community and create larger and stronger local personal networks to find Arizona sources for our businesses’ needs.

Q: What is new and notable for your company’s near future that will impact our economy?

We sell, support and use advanced engineering tools for physical product design and manufacturing. The combination of digital twin technology and a more system-based approach to design, simulation and manufacturing will deliver greater capability and efficiency that will accelerate the rapid growth of manufacturing in the state. These technologies will allow local engineers to bring products to market that are designed faster, offer greater capability, and are manufactured more efficiently.