About my recurring nightmares

The annual tour proved to be too much to pursue my therapy at the same time, and since I’m home this week-end I figured I should visit my therapist and talk about some recurring nightmares I’ve been having.

I usually sleep very well at night, and our Q4 results should have a calming effect on me. But somehow I can’t seem to get any rest at night. I wake up in the middle of the night covered with sweat, my head filled with terrifying visions. So I went to see my therapist today, hoping that he might have a quick fix.

Do you have specific memories of your dream, asked Paul.

Of course, like last night I dreamt that I was managing Research in Motion and that I had cool prototypes landing on my desk every day. There was a baby foot in my office, and every Friday at 4:00pm it was happy hour. I was wearing khakis and a t-shirt, I mean I’ve never dressed like this at the office in my entire life.

Or the other day, I dreamt I was a powerful CEO in Silicon Valley, my employees were playing volleyball outside at lunch time, everyone was working their ass off and enjoying their time at the office so much that they didn’t leave until midnight. We had a company cafeteria where chefs had these wonderful organic meals available free of charge to everyone working for me. I could hear laughs in the hallway. And there was a Steinway in the lobby, so that everyone could appreciate the beauty of this instrument.

Paul raised one eyebrow and said, Mike I'm not sure I'm following you, what part of those dreams do you find terrifying?

Don't you get it? Everything! Everything is my dreams is terrifying, just imagine what it would cost me to have a fully subsidized cafeteria, and I'm not talking about buying a fucking piano. I mean, those expense need to be changed to a customer, who will pay for all this? I don’t understand, why on God’s green and sustainable earth do I have these nightmares?

I think you may have repressed feelings, said Paul. Your subconscious is dying for fun and creativity. Your micromanage your company at unprecedented levels, you do not trust anyone but yourself and the control culture is so ingrained at CGI that nobody has fun anymore. So while at the conscious level you’re able to control those feelings, your subconscious is not on par at this difference shows up at night in your dreams.

Paul, you couldn’t be more wrong I said. I took out my Q4 results from my briefcase and I showed him the key numbers that we were able to achieve. We delivered very good results in fiscal 2009, despite the worst economic conditions in more than a generation, I said. My subconscious must be thrilled, no? I then took out some printed slides I had for financial analysts, explaining to my therapist that CGI is a much lower risk than most technology companies in Canada. U.S. revenues increased by 7.9%, I mean this should not cause me any nightmare, right? Sure, Canadian and European revenues fell a little, but this recession should be over soon and we shall continue our profitable growth strategy.

Paul paused for a very long time. Maybe he was processing our Q4 results to determine if he would buy CGI shares after our session.

He suggested we continue to talk about my dreams next week. Damn.