Merry Profitable Christmas to all CGI members

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through CGI

Not a member was stirring, not even new hires.

The profit-sharing stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St Roach soon would be there.

The members were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of profitable growth danced in their heads.

And Serge in his office, and I in mine,

Had just settled our leaders brains for a very short winter’s nap.

Yours truly is taking a short break from posting, returning in 2010 with more exciting tales of the IT corporate world. If you have stories to share, rumors to start, fascinating tales about PSA not working, please send your thoughts at fake mike roach at gmail dot com. Finally, may your work in 2010 add value to our profitable growth and may your business unit reach its sales objectives. Roach out.

No news. Really.

The CGI news feed has been quiet for a while, so my assistant Natalie suggested we do a pointless press release to emphasize how good we are in hope that'll maintain our stock price above $13 during the holidays. So we issued this yesterday where we basically say that we raked $1.1B in contracts during October-December. It doesn't say it this is actually lower or higher than Q1 last year, you'll have to dig that up.

I now get a mailbox full of rants from CGI members who didn't get a profit-sharing bonus this year because their business unit financial results sucked. My standard reply is, wake up and smell the coffee, give me some lucrative 10-year managed services contracts with loaded customers and maybe, just maybe, you'll be considered worthy. This is CGI folks, we're not the Salvation Army. Now get back to work and try to bring some profitable growth.

CGI to hire Robert Pattison (Part 3 and final)

Yes, Robert Pattison did show up at my office Monday morning, and what a surprise it was. For one thing, he looked pretty sharp. Serge was impressed as well, he spent a few minutes to teach Robert about CGI's history, why we have a dream and what are our core values. Young Pattison was delighted to work for such an organization and he thought the corporate office was a cool place to work.

I go, well you won't be working here Robert, I mean we've assigned you to a project starting this morning, Serge and I will drive you to the client's location. It's a government client, so don't expect fancy office or anything. I could feel Robert was a bit disappointed, but he understood that consultants need to bill in order to breathe.

So the three of us drove to the non-descript building where Robert was assigned as a project manager for CGI. I told Robert on the way there that this project was going okay but there was a significant disagreement on the scope of work between CGI and the client. We had burned 4 PMs with no results. The director there is slightly psychotic, his goal was to hire another firm but CGI won the bid thanks to aggressive pricing, so the director's doing everything he can to undermine our work. But besides those details it's a great project.

So we got to the client's building, gave Robert an access card and showed him the cubicle where he would spend the next several months or so. It was all beige, standard government furniture, and there was an old and dirty beige PC with a keyboard that would keep microbiologists busy for 10 years.

Robert goes, Jee I feel like Peter Gibbons in this office.

I go, who the heck is this Gibbons guy, is he some kind of a star among office workers?

Robert smiles, he sure is Mike, Gibbons is the man.

I looked at Serge who read my thoughts, and he answered "I'm on it".

So we left Robert there, assuming someone would spot him during the day and give him work or something. After all, he was a PM, and the PM's role is to walk around and try to find what's going on. Getting his network ID would probably take a week, so Robert will probably rot for a few days, this will give him enough time to learn where the coffee machine is, where are the cleanest mens room, and so on.

Serge and I went then back to the HQ, where we brainstormed how we could leverage the presence of Robert Pattison at CGI. Definitely some kind of printed campaign aimed at Gen Y, like Robert chose CGI and he's now living our dream, why shouldn't you? Or IT never looked more cool, we want YOU for the CGI workforce.

The story doesn't end here.

At 5pm, Robert came back to the CGI HQ and knocked on my door. I go, Robert what a pleasant surprise to see you here, how was your day?

Robert was all smile, like he had won the lottery. He goes, Mike Roach, only you man could have helped me, I need to send you some friends from the movie industry. Really.

I go, Robert well the pleasure is all mine, I'm glad CGI could give you a spot where you can blossom as an IT worker and manage to be billable.

Robert goes, no dude you don't understand, I'm giving you my resignation today. It worked!

I was livid. What the hell do you mean Robert, we just hired you, what's going on?

Robert goes, you showed me how happy I was as an actor and I didn't know it. Playing a vampire may be corny, but it sure beats working all-year long in a government office. When I'm on the set, I'm surrounded by passionate people who work their ass off in order to make a great movie. There's a sense of pride. Today, I was surrounded by depressed office workers who don't give a shit about what happens, all the talk around the water cooler is either about retirement, unions talk or pointless gossip. I mean, dude, one day in this harsh environment is enough for me. Do you really think a human being can accomplish work - any work - in a 8x8 cubicle? I mean, it's like a chicken farm here, people come into their cage, don't move during the day and go home at night. Is that it?

Robert said he would send me some of his friends who think they are depressed, once they see what goes on in the IT world they will fly back to L.A. and enjoy the gruelling actor work like never before. He waved me goodbye and headed for the elevators. Dozens of girls of all age asked for his autograph before he left the building.

Now I am depressed.

CGI to hire Robert Pattison (Part 2)

As a follow-up to the previous story, I mustered all my strength and called Robert Pattison’s agent to lure him at CGI.

His agent was pretty straightforward and business-minded, I liked that. Said Robert is exhausted of shooting Twilight movies, wants to take a real break and go off the radar for a while. Cash is not issue, Robert is loaded. So I said, so far so good, we cannot pay a lot anyway. So he gives me his cell phone number and I call the punk.

So Robert goes, Mike Roach…. CGI… right.. my agent told me you’d call all right. So you’re the computer guy?

I go, yes I am the CEO of the largest IT consulting company in Canada, ISO 9001 of course, we have over 26,000 employees worldwide, revenue growth of 3.2% this fiscal year. So what’s going on Robert, you want to take a break from your acting career?

Robert goes, yeah Mike, I’m kind of sick of this Twilight shit, ya know, shooting schedule is taking a huge fucking toll, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, plus all the parties. And Kristen is so fucked up, I mean a real psycho, she’s the next Lindsay, I need to get away from her. And also, handling fans is a total pain, I got girls who fedex me their panties overnight, they’re still wet when I open the box. I need to do real fucking things like repairing motorcycles or cleaning a chicken farm, you know, I’d like to go AWOL for a while an live a fucking normal life like everyone.

Then I heard the clinging of bottles and then a huge “Shit!’, poor Robert must have knocked down the left-overs from last night’s party. What a shocker.

I go, yes I can relate to this too. Although I’d prefer to have panties on my desk than lawsuits from disgruntled customers. But anyway, Robert, what would you think if I offered you a temp position at CGI Montreal? We’ll provide you with some training. As long as you want, we cannot pay the same money than a movie studio of course, but our company has a dream, values and we’re geared toward profitable growth. Check out our stock price. Ticker is GIB.

Robert goes, you are in Montreal? That’s a long fucking ride from L.A., I don’t want to fly to South Africa ya know?

I go, Montreal is in Canada, Robert. You don’t have to fly to South Africa. It’s an hour from JFK. And rest assured, we don’t live in igloos and we don’t eat raw seal.

Robert goes, really? Man I should look on a map, I thought Canada was in the middle East between Brazil and Madagascar. Do you guys still have a king? So yeah, sure, I can be there next Monday. What day is today? Talk to my agent for the details.

I thanked Robert for his unparalleled attention to our conversation and we agreed to meet at my office next Monday at 9:00. In the morning I specified. This douche bag might have shown at night thinking CGI was a night club.

I then opened my Outlook calendar as requested that Serge be there as well. He will pay for this.

CGI to hire Robert Pattison (Part 1)

Serge came to me with this idea, he sometimes has this uncontrollable urge to do something for CGI. So he came into my office this morning, suggesting that CGI hires some kind of rock star to prove to youngsters that IT is the way to go for a career. As you all know, pushing teenagers to do a degree in computer science is harder nowadays than asking a government not to create deficits.

So Serge said, we should hire Robert Pattison, he may not know a lot about computers but we could find him a good spot at CGI. I go, who the fuck is Robert Pattison, he is a quarterback or something? Serge rolls his eyes, Mike you don’t know jack about popular culture, he’s a movie star man, he’s the hottest ticket you can have for a teenage flick. You should watch Entertainment Tonight more often, he’s the lead actor in the Twilight movies. So I go, a new Twilight Zone series?

Serge sighs, as to demonstrate my cluelessness about the entertainment news that he knows so much about. Mike, he said, I’m a Imdb Pro user and I met his agent at a cocktail party and he told me that Robert wanted to take a break from acting. You know, just to take some fresh air. Since he’s extremely popular with teenagers and young adults, CGI could hit a home run by hiring this guy. IT will suddenly be cool again and we will party like it is 1999 all over again.

I had to admit Serge had a point. Having a movie star aboard could appeal to young people looking for career options. If they go get a degree in computer science, CGI could hire them cheap afterward and tag them on a high-profit gig. I go, Serge tell me, what this Robert guy looks like. Serge opens his briefcase and shows me the picture above.

I go, what the fuck, is this the dickhead you want me to hire? Jesus-Christ, look at this guy for 2 seconds will you, he looks totally baked, sure he’d be the perfect candidate if they do a remake of Still Smokin but this bum doesn't fit into a serious IT project.

Serge goes, his agent says he looks pretty decent if we can keep fun stuff away from him. Moreover, we would hire him for what – couple of months – just enough time for him to chill and for us to leverage his presence at CGI. It’s a win-win situation.

Serge enjoys busting my balls when he knows he has a point. So I go, well give me the phone number of this agent, I’ll call him later today and we’ll see what we can do. Criminey, look again at this guy, he probably burns one after shooting a take.

What a day it’ll be. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Doublespeak for survival

A good CEO needs to be extremely proficient in the art of managing communications.

Some might say that a thick amount of doubletalk is essential to hide facts while claiming to be transparent, and I can’t disagree. A scientist has to call a molecule a molecule if he wants to be understood by his peers. But as you move up the scale and realize that your choice of words can make or break a situation, you start mastering the fine art of euphemism, and this is where we separate children from adults.

Let me give you an example: I was watching the news the other day, and one doctor was talking about the odds of a “cardiac event”. I thought, that’s funny, it’s no longer a “cardiac incident”, a term which contains a negative word. So the good doctors coined a more neutral term, almost non-descriptive, to describe a freaking situation where your heart goes berserk and chances are you will die in a few second. And while you’re struggling on the floor for what may be your last breath, you’re thinking: ah, that’s the cardiac event that my good doctor was talking about.

So we at CGI are using a very elaborate lexicon for saying things somewhat differently, while stating that integrity is still a corporate value on which our company is built. Negative growth (rather than declining revenues), rationalizing excessive real estate (rather than termination or firing), I mean we really work hard to come up with this stuff don’t think for one second that it is easy. Every press release goes through several writing phases where we bend, alter and twist words, challenge ourselves in brainstorming sessions to come up with new terms that depict positive things.

And even after all this work is done, we still have to put down disclaimers such as this one:

The words “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “anticipate,” “foresee,” “plan,” and similar expressions and variations thereof, identify certain of such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, which speak only as of the date on which they are made

In other words, we said something on that day, and now it’s another day, and the world-as-we-know-it is entirely different so the statement is now all bull. Well it was accurate until 11:59PM on that day. At midnight the world goes thru a giant shaker and the financial reality is completely altered. Actually if you’re still up before midnight, check out CNBC as the clock goes through 12:00. All the numbers change. They switch their staff at midnight, because the evening staff cannot wrap their minds on the new financial reality, a new team comes in and makes a fresh assessment of the situation.

No wonder we all sleep at night.

Do not daytrade GIB

When I was a teenager living in Pembroke Ontario, life was much simpler. I was the head of the Young Visicalc Club, a non profit organization aimed at teaching the wonders of this new thing called a spreadsheet. Yes dear members, that was before Excel, that was before 1-2-3. Life did exist before the Internet. While some of my friends were launching Estes rockets and some others were learning to play the Stratocaster, I was at aw with the power of the TRS-80 Model III. I was consumed with the desire to use this new spreadsheet tool, and I could foresee a not so distant future where an entire corporation could be numbers-driven to profitable growth.

I did of course some stock market research and investing at a pace that was in tune with the era. Those were the golden Louis Rukeyser days. Men were real men and they wore 3-piece suits even on week-ends.

Nowadays I feel like I’m totally disconnected with the world, or maybe it is the world that is disconnected with the reality. CBNC announces a breaking news every 5 minutes, and it is usually a pointless press release or a 0.05% share price drop from a low-volume stock. I was a teenager back again, I’d feel obligated to post every thought that crosses my mind on Facebook.

This is why my friends CGI does not issue mindless press releases 5 times a day, and this is why - even if you're a shareholder - you should not daytrade our public stock. GIB is like slow cooking, it is a long term value that keeps on growing if you are patient. Truth is, I don’t check the stock price 25 times a day because daytrading GIB is verboten in the C-suite. What I check though every 15 minutes is our revenue stream, where it is coming from, why some business unit is having a bad week, how many traitors left for a competitor.

If you want to daytrade a stock, why don't you pick a company whose products loose value every day, like Dell. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Members Column: Sandboxing your sanity

Dear Mike, I’ve been working on this government project for CGI for a couple of years and I’m surrounded by a bunch of foot-dragging narrow-thinking could-not-care-less public servants whose sole objective in life is to retire. They hire us to do their work yet they despise us and do everything to undermine our work. Why is it so? Signed: Joey Going Postal

JGP here has a very good question but the client-consultant dynamic is so taboo that I hesitate to fully disclose my thoughts. Oh, what the hell.

First, you need to understand the back story that is leading to this mess. When a guy accepts a job as a public servant, he accepts to spend his professional life in a dimly lit rat cage marred with political disputes. Any IT project is just a mean to give an uppercut to a moronic opponent, gain more power, brownnose upper management and make the other team more miserable.

People working in government are not there for the fun, the money, the perks or the prestige. I mean, if you had to do a sales pitch to first-graders about why they should choose a government career, you might fall short of arguments after 6 seconds. People work there because it’s a secure position and they have big unions to protect them. So it’s no wonder that complete bozos blossom there and contaminate the few decent people who are trying to make a difference.

After a few years living in this harsh environment, people naturally drift to a constant state of mild depression with no short or long term expectations. The only real requirement is to show up in the morning and leave at 5. If you’re lucky, the project you’re in is not too messy and nobody bothers you. In fact, the only exit from the rat cage is retirement or death, although the former is less painful and may involve golf.

So what happen when government hires a prestigious consulting firm like CGI? There is this clash of culture where energetic goal-oriented positive-minded consultants have to accomplish a task managed by depressed government drones. Let's just say success is not within the scope of work.

If government would allow its employees to facebook all day long and download porn, they would stop having long faces and they would show up highly motivated. The output would be the same – that is, zilch – but they’d be so busy watching flicks in their office that would not show up at meetings and the project would be solely managed and executed by consultants.

Therefore ensuring its success.

Delivering profit-sharing

A few weeks from now, those who are worthy will get their profit-sharing check in the mail. I know, I know, some of you happen to work for a lame business unit that didn’t reach their sales numbers, and as a result you will eat processed chicken for Christmas.

The alternative – that is giving a profit-sharing bonus even to those who work for underperforming business units – would be totally anti-capitalist. Money goes to those who deserve it.

This means that those who don’t get anything have to work double-hard in ’10, like really push yourself to bill more. Some whiners on Glassdoor.com say this is completely unfair, my response is to remind them that CGI is not forced to share its profit. We could keep it all to ourselves, grow our available margin to do an acquisition, and laugh all the way to the bank (and we all know bankers like to laugh). It's like if you have this filthy rich uncle who drives a Ferrari and he gives 4-figure check to everyone in his extended family for Christmas, some will find a way to say this is not enough. You can't please everyone.

If you did perform well as an individual, like real exceptional, but your VP is total clown who screwed up and lost good accounts, what can I say. Life is unfair. Rest assured, the clown will be summoned and I’ll make sure he runs his circus outside of CGI. I have this secret trap in my office with a button underneath my desk, I’ve always wanted to have this since I was a kid watching WB cartoons on Saturday. Push the button, the person disappears from my sight and ends up in a dumpter.

Hell runs SAP

We all have some painful things we need to do from time to time to make a living, like really bend backward and go against our very nature. For me, it’s when a customer calls CGI and asks to help them deploy SAP. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and calmly answer, of course send us the requirements we’ll have some people on site tomorrow morning.

For those of you outside the trade, deploying SAP in a business is like having a colonoscopy done on a boat during a storm at night by a drunken doctor with advanced Parkinson symptoms. You won’t be the same ever again. Not even close.

You first saw the ads in the train station like “Kellogg runs SAP” with a stock picture of smiling business man, so you figured out your business is as good as Kellogg therefore this is the path to go. Serious companies run serious software, don’t they? So you trade your personal judgement for a desire to behave like your peers do in hope that it will bring you success. Like that has worked before.

SAP being German software, you then begin to associate Mercedes qualities to the product. The word “rigorous” gets seeded into your subconscious. You want your business to ride like a C-class, don’t you? Next, you see the astronomical cost of the software, so you expect that SAP must really be a nifty piece of software made by Von Brown-class programmers. At this point your mind is loaded with very high expectations, you sign a fat check to the giggling SAP sales rep and you then cross you fingers everything will be okay.

It won’t. You just torpedoed your own business.

The first reason is that humans are not pessimistic enough, they can’t believe how screwed up a project can turn. Sure, you had a contingency plan but it’s likely to be paper thin compared to the cosmic issues that you will encounter. Humans have a hard time wrapping their minds on complexity on that scale, it’s like being able to understand perfectly the organisational structure of the entire U.S. administration from the Oval office down to the smallest division of all departments. It can’t be done.

The next reason why SAP projects go down in flame is that you must deconstruct your business to the molecular level and then rebuild it completely in a SAP fashion. Yes kids, the business must adapt itself to SAP, not the other way around. It’s German, you remember? So managing a company change of that scale will generate casualties on an epic scale. Orders won’t get processed because of IT snafus, confusion will arise even if you had planned the transition down to the smallest detail. If you’re into the manufacturing industry, changes on the line will take hours if not days to get processed instead of minutes. Customers will scream at you and go shop at a competitor who has not been infected by SAP yet. You might even loose market share in the next quarter and get hammered by Wall Street. Are you having fun yet?

And then there’s the SAP software itself. If you thought IT was complex, wait until you see the SAP semi arrive at your location, loaded with boxes and boxes full of DVDs and documentation. Learning to speak Japanese, German and Klingon must be kids play compared to installing and maintaining SAP. This piece of crap is so fucking complex that nobody on Earth can claim to fully master all the components of this software. For one thing, SAP experts tend to die young, divorced and bald. When my SAP experts ask to take a day off to chill, they go manage the JFK runways on a Friday night. Man, that was easy they say to me the next Monday.

So if tomorrow the devil makes you purchase SAP and you want us to help, call me personally. If you don’t mind, I’ll first send you my therapist to understand the subconscious desires to deploy SAP. It may take a few months, billable time of course.

IBM wants to deploy Notes in Afghanistan

As if these people were not already in deep doo doo with what their country has been through for the past decades, there are rumors that IBM is trying to force hapless Afghans into questionable IT choices that could lock them up for a very looooong time.

The picture above shows an IBM VP disguised as a senior afghan trying to explain all the wonderful things their country could do if only they used IBM software. The old fellow sitting to his right seems to think this is all goat shit. And the younger guy with a beard standing behind him has flashbacks from his teenager days when he was managing PS/2 purchase as part of a training course in the U.S. Boy that was painful isn’t it?

Of course there’s a well-thought strategy behind this, you don’t shove a 10-year mainframe contract down their throat the first day. First, you deploy Lotus Notes and insist that increased communication is the path to clean democracy. Of course it doesn’t work exactly the way it should, which gives IBM an excuse to ship more consultants to help “smooth the transition to a mature solution”. And then Afghans wake up one day and their entire IT hardware and software infrastructure depends on a single player.

CGI doesn’t work this way, so maybe Obama should walk the talk and invite us over there. We could talk about values, share our dream. We could outsource their entire infrastructure so that their government can focus on real issues. You want CA software? We got it. You change your mind and want to go Microsoft? No problem, sign the CR here. You prefer IBM software? There you go. CGI would hire all their government IT workers, ship them to Troy, Michigan and create a super-center delivering tailored IT solution to Afghanistan.

Having 5000 Afghans living in Troy might change the local scenery a bit, but everyone would win.

Can our stock go even higher?

I overheard a conversation at the sandwich shop where I usually go on week-ends, two guys were discussing the CGI share price. One said really excited and thought that GIB could reach $20 by mid-2010. In the midst of all the bad news going on the market CGI was, quote: a rock solid foundation. I almost hugged him, but I didn't. Swine flu concerns.

His friend was a bit more pessimistic. His argument was that the CGI stock price got inflated following the acquisition of EDS by HP, then Perot by Dell and then ACS by the copier company. If CGI goes through 2010 without any major acquisition - or being acquired - the share could dip below $10. Analysts want excitement, they want to see real growth.

So I left the sandwich shop with mixed feelings about how well is CGI is perceived by outsiders. If only they could see what I see.

Dude, you’re getting a Perot…I mean a Dell

I love hitting on this nail as I think this merger is something that eventually will kill Dell but save their shareholders. Twenty years from now - assuming Dell will still be a brand name which I doubt – people will associate this company with IT services, not crappy netbooks or PCs whose name sounds like a villain from a bad sci-fi movie. In the end, I believe people will stick with the Perot name and the Dell particle will be dropped out. Or rather ejected.

Perot consultants are now told to promote Dell hardware because their earnings dropped 54% and my sources say Michael is going ballistic over the abysmal sales figures. And things won’t get any better for Dell in 2010.

Picture above was taken during an IT conference in Texas where Perot was sponsoring the event. I’m being told the poor Perot guy was promoting the Optiplex line of desktop, he must have felt like a total douche doing this. Why the hell am I doing this? Are the folks at EDS forced into similar humiliation? Do they have to dress in a 12-C outfit? Can I go work now?

Note to the Perot guy in the silly outfit: Dude, if you still care about your dignity, send me your resume. We’ll treat you right. Selling PCs is not a secret agenda at CGI.

Reader's Column : Profitable growth

Mike, you’ve been hammering the profitable growth theme at CGI for quite a long time but would you care to explain to us mortals what it is?

I’ll be happy to answer this one, as profitable growth has been and will always be a theme very dear to me. The short answer as to what profitable growth is “high profitability and sustainable profit growth”, in order words a fat mark-up that’s getting bigger everyday with no end in sight.

One could argue that it is a totally delusional perspective because, well anything that is highly profitable is bound to enter a situation where more competitors join the fray, prices get lower due competition, and that fat mark-up becomes unsustainable. The recent mortgage meltdown is another example where high-profitability could not be maintained forever.

So if you’re in an industry whose capital is entirely human like CGI, the first thing you must tackle is cost. Humans are insanely expensive, you need to be fiercely control salaries, bonuses and profit-sharing. But – humans are a renewable resource – so if you must loose someone because of salary issues, just do it and never negotiate. There will be always others, and some of them will ask for less. Less money for them means higher profit for the company.

The second thing is focus, meaning not diversify into markets or fields where you have no expertise. For CGI, it means focus on service, not on frivolous things such as software or hardware. Those require regular investments in R&D and maintenance, and such expense is a direct hit to the bottom line.

And there’s the question of bias. Once you paint yourself with a specific color, customers expect you to use that color every time. I mean, it’s like the sex market. If you advertise yourself as a BDSM expert, people won’t call you because they have a foot fetish or they want to wear a diaper. You want to offer the larger broader array of service without locking yourself in a niche that may prove to be too narrow on the long term. So focus while being wide open, this sounds kind of weird but this is the philosophy.

The 3^rd element is almost a secret ingredient, although others unfortunately know about it. It’s called the government. This is where your fat profits can live on forever. You see, when a company does all the wrong things, it eventually runs out of money and disappears in a puff of Chapter 11. When a political party does a bunch of crazy actions that undermine the country, the voters will realize (it may take a while though) that the stupid bastards need to be thrown out of the office.

But government? That bottomless barrel of bureaucracy never runs out of money because they take yours, and history proves that it is an infinite cycle (well almost, like the French said in 1789). If one agency blows a hundred million dollars on a doomed project, no public servant will of course lose their job since no one is really accountable for anything, and they’ll get a budget increase the next year. Why? Because failure brought them more experience, meaning they can handle bigger things. It’s all bull of course and they will repeat the same flawed behaviour with the same dubious technology and the next project will also go down the drain. Failure is definitely sustainable.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter from the IT service company perspective. For CGI and its competitors, it means a bigger contract and bigger profits in the end. If you do the right thing in a project and the project goes to hell due to forces outside your control, the customer will still like you. And love saves the day. Once the doomed project has been folded and new budgets have been voted, who will the customer call? Someone unknown? Of course not, the customer will call you because you did a half-decent job. And he likes your face. Success – or failure – is irrelevant, what matters is the relationship. Once you’re in the circle of trust, all you have to do is show up at work the rest will take care of itself.

So my thinking is that profitable growth is something we can build on indefinitely as long we maintain tight control on cost, focus on service and open ourselves to more government projects. This, dear members, is the ground on which CGI is built.

Black Friday special at CGI

This Friday only, get a 2% discount on a senior project manager, 5% on any business analyst, account manager, QA testers or technical analysts, and a whopping 10% on anyone that is currently rotting on the bench.

Picture above was taken at the CGI headquarter on Sherbrooke last night when news of this discount was leaked on a blog. Some people were just plain nuts, they were expecting a CGI person to go troubleshooting their virus-ridden PC at home, like we were some kind of Geek Squad or something. We used a fire hose to cool down the crowd.

To benefit from this very special and one time discount you need to sign (or renew) a 3-year contract with CGI Group and clear any competing firm from your organization, especially the temple merchants from Dell/Perot or the folks from the Blue Man group. This special cancels any other discount you may have been promised by rogue account managers. Void in certain states/provinces. Restrictions may apply on certain projects where money is no object.

I’m feeling generous, this does not happen very often. Act before the effect subsides.

Planning to spend Thanksgiving time on training

Yes, Thanksgiving is a time that you can enjoy and it doesn't get billed to a customer. Those are rare, precious moments, are they? Scarcity makes its worthwhile. I'm planning to force my troops to work on Thanksgiving next year, as this could give our revenues a small notch that CGI desperately need.

As for me, I've enlisted to a special Excel boot camp for CEO only. Serge once told me that there was this executive school specialized in all sort of special training, but it was not for the faint of heart. You had to dress like soldiers, sleep on site, and Excel instructors would wake you at 5:00am screaming at you. Then you would go through classes of hard, high-end stuff related to Excel. Like, how to implement a circular formula even though Excel forbids you to. There's a way, I've been told.

By the end of the day your brain is so pumped up with formulas and worksheets that you can hardly sleep without dreaming in cells (also called a wet dream, in accounting lingo). The instructors then take you to some intense drill sessions to exhaust you physically.

It's a 3-day marathon, and apparently those who manage to go through without a mental brakedown emerge so strong mentally speaking that their next fiscal quarter are astonishing, like profits increased by 10%. I'm so excited.

Reader's Column Day

Your dedicated CEO is listening again to you today, let’s take a call from Roberto:

I’m a junior Java developer and I work at the CGI office. The company is blocking all access to Facebook and MySpace, how am I supposed to do my work if CGI is blocking communication to the outside world?

Let’s do some profiling on Roberto. This is the kind of Gen-Y slacker who posts what he had for breakfast on Facebook, in addition to what kind of socks he’s wearing (let me guess: white), how he feels about the world at any particular moment (meaning, whining about events outside his control), and what score he just achieved at Bejeweled.

If your local CGI office blocks Facebook, it’s probably because you spend too much time posting rants about your lasting acne problems and you’re not delivering any decent code for your customer. Here’s my advice to you: remove the RJ-45 cable from your PC and try doing work – any work – without Internet access.

The first day will be awful, you will experience full blown hallucinations due to withdrawal. Like seeing Pauline Marois in a sexy nurse outfit. Or Michael Dell announcing that he wants to buy CGI. That kind of really scary thing.

Jee, I just scared myself with the last one.

The next day you will able not to launch MSN when you get to work. You may even be able to use other mean of communication, like a phone, to get in touch with someone. Yeah, like talking. Sounds old school, isn’t it?

By the end of the week you will realize that all you can do with a computer is actually work, meaning producing deliverables for which a client is willing to pay. You may realize that Facebook is just a way to channel your inner frustrations and it leads to nothing but more frustrations because no one really cares that you had Christmas-theme Rice Krispies this morning.

Face it boy, the world is a harsh place and self-interest drives this place. Now get back to work.

What a surprise, Dell earnings down 54%

Really, no one saw that coming. Even me. Revenue was down 15 percent over the last year, and profits fell 54 percent. They blame weak pre-order demand for Windows 7 machine, which is typical of the denial phase when your business is going down. What does Michael think about this?

Founder and CEO Michael Dell said he expects companies to begin to order new PCs as part of the so-called "refresh" cycle starting early next year. "With an aging install base ... an accumulation of new technologies with hardware, software, virtualized clients...IT managers know they can't extend these assets forever," Dell said. "I think it will be a refresh that occurs over perhaps 18 months. I can't remember a time when a high percentage of (IT managers) skipped an entire operating system."

I agree, even we at CGI skipped over the Vista ditch, we’re still running XP with Explorer 6 and although it’s far from being perfect it works okay. Here’s the problem, you entire hardware business depends on how bad Microsoft screwed up with their aging Windows code. PCs are commodities, it doesn’t matter if you buy a Toshiba or an HP laptop anymore. It’s all the same shit.

Michael, if you were a smart man you would sell all your PC business to some nameless Chinese company, admit that Christmas is over, and focus exclusively on Perot, because that’s where the money is. Even IBM who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer understood that a long time ago, but you’re still fighting a war that is basically over. Michael, take a word of advice from that final scene in Chinatown

Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?

Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gitts! The future.

Yes, the future. We at CGI understand this very well, IT service is where the future is, nobody cares about nuts and bolts anymore.

How to handle salary reviews

This is a post aimed at CGI managers who need – as part of their loooong list of duties – to meet with their subordinates on an annual basis and discuss their performance, their objectives and (gasp) their salary.

First of all, I strongly encourage you to use the term “salary revision” or “salary review” rather than “salary upgrade”, as the latter directly implies “more” and it’s a bad negotiation start when your position is a manager. Altering perceptions by changing language is one of the basic skills of any successful person.

Next, you need to read our latest financial news, take a yellow marker and outline any fact that could be used to dampen any eagerness from the employee to get a fat raise. For instance, if you work for CGI in Canada, this is what you should say to your subordinate: We're still operating at a negative growth level in Canada. Negative growth, catchy term eh? This is what I mean by using language in a clever way.

And then you say that revenues generated in Canada fell to $2.17 billion from $2.34 billion in fiscal 2008. Never mind that there are other good news in the pipeline, your job is NOT to cheer employees. At this point you set the stage and the employee is forced to listen to this deluge of bad news, which puts a bucket of icy water into his personal gain perspective. If you master the art of observation, you should notice that the employee face has changed a bit, like a cloud is now blocking the sun.

Then you move to a more global perspective: CGI spent $35 million in severance and costs related to “rationalizing excess real estate” as jobs were transferred to "low cost offshore operations" in India. That’s double talk for firing douche bags at all levels who didn’t sell or bill enough to pay for their own salary.

In addition, if we can get rid of a $50K SharePoint specialist in Ottawa and do the same job by a guy named Apu in Mumbai who charge 4 times less, everybody wins. But CGI had to spend $35 million to do this, so it’s less money for potential salary upgrades. You understand?

Once you got through all those negative news, you put a cheery upswing before you deliver the final blow, like : despite all the bad news that are going on these days, CGI wants to show you how much we appreciate all those long hours that you’re putting for the company, so here’s 2%, that’s the best we can do under the current gloomy conditions.

If you play the right cards before this moment, the employee should feel happy to get a 2% raise. He feels he’s not considered as “excess real estate” but a “strategic resource” for CGI, and it’s the side of the fence where he wants to be. Again, it’s a matter of managing expectations and altering perceptions.

So let me know if you have any questions regarding this, feel free to share your experience, what works and what doesn’t. Fake Mike Roach at GMail Dot Com.

An industry whose capital is human

As you know, CGI is not manufacturing trinkets like some of our competitors do. The human element – to reuse the Dow Chemical campaign – is at the core of what we do. And humans are unfortunately the most difficult species to manage.

When Serge hired me more than 10 years ago, I did a very thorough due diligence of CGI, Kojak-style. At one point, we were having a drink at the Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal, I took out my Mont Blanc pen and sketched a triangle on my napkin. Its three points were meant to represent the three types of stakeholders: shareholders, clients and employees. I used to believe that, in the long term, we could not succeed if we couldn’t find a balance among the three partners.

How naïve I was. Here I was, a young guy in his mid-forties who only had one job at Bell Canada for 25 years, trying to come up with something smart to impress the company founders who were looking for a CEO.

Where did I get the idea about the triangle? Let me share something with you. If you read about how the current Toyota logo came to existence, you learn that the two perpendicular center ovals represent a relationship of mutual trust between the customer and Toyota. Where are the employees? Nowhere. What matters is the bond between the corporation and customers, employees are just necessary gears required to move cash flow from one party to the other.

I figured I was smarter than those Japanese dudes. Moving employees in this grand vision thing did sound impressive and it helped get my job at CGI, but everyone knew I was full of shiitake. They didn’t care though, because it sounded great.

While humans are the building blocks of any IT company, they must be corralled to bring order and unity which lead to profitable growth. If you shed too much light on your employees, their egos sprout and next thing you know you have union representatives knocking on your door. You don’t want that, do you? DO YOU?

So, on the surface you need to give employees the impression that they are important. Profit sharing, lots of HR processes and even human contact once in a while. But underneath all the nice things, you need to rule your staff with German-style discipline. They are – like the philosopher Waters once said – just bricks in the wall. Middle management is the concrete that hold the bricks together, and you need lots of it. And bricks serve a very specific function, you don’t want bricks on the loose that decide what color the walls should be. You catch my drift?

Clients also need to be corralled, especially the ones in the government sector, but they bring money, lots of money. If one decides to build a crazy program that costs hundreds of millions with a vague scope of work and it is willing to pay for it, I say let it bloom into a thousand flowers.

Employees are an expense from an accounting perspective, so the relationship is entirely different. You need to give in a little, but not too much. Bricks need air to survive, so it’s up to you as a manager to run your experiments and decide how much.

You’d be surprise how low you can go.

CGI is not for sale

When you’re a teenager girl and no one asks you out, either two things. Your physical appearance puts you in the Susan Boyle class and most people would guess that you live with approximately 12 cats, or you’re a total knockout and no one dare to ask you out because they know you’ll turn them down just by the way you grin.

In one very good interview I gave to the Financial Post recently, I said that CGI has never been approached for a merger because everyone knows we’re not for sale. I like to think that our more of the same (MoTS) strategy will ultimately deliver more value to the shareholder (me in particular) and we can grow this thing slowly without taking unnecessary risks.

I don’t want to be in a position where I have to sell knickknacks like Perot has to do now. Now that those guys report to a hardware outlet, guess what happens when Perot consultants do let’s say a strategic plan to overhaul your infrastructure. You’re right, they’ll want to shove a truckload of blade servers up your butt so that the local VP from Dell get a huge fucking bonus this year. Everyone has an agenda. Same thing with IBM, their codernauts want to lock you in a long-term mainframe service plan along with their biased consulting expertise.

You can’t be all things to all people and pretend you have your customer interests at heart.

Of course what I don’t say is that a merger would put me in a position where I would have to report to someone, and when you’re a CEO this is like a total demotion. We all have egos, don’t we? I would rather retire, go back to Pembroke and grow a subsidized product like pigs or corn.

But I have to admit, I’d like to have offers on the table for CGI. Just for the pleasure of being considered and then politely say no. Or yes. But no one calls. Is it because we’re so heavily in the Canadian market which is considered a niche from the U.S. perspective, or is it because we’re a prized jewel whose value puts us above the rest? I’d like to think the latter, but I have my share of doubts like everyone else.

Vatican wants to outsource their IT

Their Exchange server was down this morning and the 72-year priest usually in charge of IT was sick. Poor Ben had to deal with the issue personally, trying to install the latest Microsoft security patches and getting expiration messages from the antivirus. Sources tell me that His Holiness lost his temper and started screaming in German at the Windows 2000 server, something related to the Devil lurking in technology.

Anyway I had my Italian business development VP sent pronto to the Sixtine Chapel, it looks like they have a server room underneath ground level. I know, I should have send a tech guy to fix the problem, make the Pope happy, and then and only then discuss outsourcing deal.

Problem is, this goes against the CPMF methodology we have at CGI. If you want to make a quick buck, sure you can fix the issue asap. But if you want to make real money like we did in Q4 and address profitable growth, you need to address the business issues first, and then write down a scope of work, talk price and schedule, sign a waiver in case we scrap centuries of Vatican confidential data, and then we try to find a tech with a goatee and an earring who can fix the problem. Total billing time: a couple of weeks.

My sources say the biz dev guy was not able to talk to His Holiness, even though he showed his CGI business card - I'm surprised. Note to self: call Benny next week and have lunch with the guy.

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.

What I want for Christmas

I had a stunning revelation during our annual tour and I’d like to share it with you. And no, it does not involve a ray of light, a church and paying an orphanage overdue taxes.

I took the picture above at the Heathrow airport, those giant displays are used to show departure and arrival information. Serge was with me, eating a pastrami sandwich while reading People magazine. I said to him, you know what Serge, we should put technology to better use. You want to upgrade to Windows 7 he asked, while keeping his eyes on the Angelina Jolie picture.

Of course not, I want those huge displays, I said. Serge looked up, choked on a sandwich bite and interrupted his reverie. Why do you want those things anyway? Watch AVI files?

This is the way a CEO should manage his organization I said. I need a couple of displays like this in my office, so I can monitor all the financial vital signs and check on what’s important. First panel should display weekly revenues per business unit, the next one should display expense reports per locations, and then time sheets to approve, the works. This will be my PeopleSoft dashboard, this is the only way for me to get the BIG picture.

If I walk into my office and immediately see that our U.S. North East revenues were down 1% last week compared to our yearly average, I can pick up the phone and act on it.

Do you see the potential? This is the only way to track down the smallest financial details of CGI. Imagine working on a 30-foot high spreadsheet. Any CEO should have this.

Serge was first doubtful such an investment was worth it, but when he saw the sparkle in my eyes he immediate knew I would track pennies across the world and CGI would quickly recuperate the cost of those screens.

I’m all excited as I write this post, like a teenager getting his first sports car.

Profit sharing and expectations

You know where I stand when it comes to dealing with expectations. The lower, the better. When you can convince yourself not to have any expectations, something magical happens. You get up in the morning, you take your shower, you go to work and you just do whatever lands on your desk and … you’re happy. Not happy per se but you have no real strong negative emotion. When a dark cloud follows you to work and make you feel all gloomy, it’s because you expect something and that something is out of reach. Expectation is the mother of disappointment.

This happy state of consciousness can be achieved using medications but health care is already out of control – especially here in Quebec where socialism has torpedoed the government finances – so we need to work on an drug-free approach to induce happiness while controlling costs.

Problem is, you just can’t say to people “expect nothing” to do the job. Even Stalin had to promise something to coerce Russians into his regime.

So we at CGI invented this profit-sharing scheme to motivate our troops to do their job. For one thing, it allows us to gloat about how good we are when we interview candidates. Each CGI member has a very small share of our profits, not a lot of money obviously, but this small token makes many people happy. It’s the intention that counts, not the numbers.

Of course there’s a bunch of strings attached. Your business unit has to reach its numbers, and CGI corporate as well. If CGI as a whole performed very well and your business unit tanked for reasons outside your control, you won’t get a dime even if you had a stellar performance. I think it is a fair approach.

When I’m doing the annual tour, many CGI members I met shake my hand and tell me all the wonderful things that they did with their profit-sharing bonus. I was able to buy new brakes for my ’98 Corolla said a mom of 4 in Montreal. I bought an iPod so I don’t have to listen to all the annoying chitchat going on next to my cubicle said one large analyst in Houston. I will be able to buy a turkey and invite my folks for Christmas said one junior guy in Ottawa. I was almost in tears.

It is during those precious moments that I realize how important my role is and why profit-sharing brings joy and happiness to all CGI members.

I'm not a star CEO

Some CEOs like to put themselves in the limelight whenever they can. They enjoy the public scene, they never miss an occasion to show themselves as if the CEO appearance ratio and stock price have a direct correlation. Some enjoy driving obscenely expensive cars in public to showcase their wealth and social status. To me, this is the road to perdition for shareholders, customers and yes even employees.

Me, I’m just a regular guy from Pembroke, Ontario and you won’t see me flashing my butt in some high-profile social event. Instead, I’ll be at the office drinking black coffee when everyone has gone home and I’ll be crunching numbers like crazy.

I was reading that Montreal’s underground water system is so dated that 40% of the water leaks before it reaches its destination – homes and businesses. How a city government could be so incompetent and negligent over the years is beyond comprehension, is the last retard-in-chief just got re-elected. Go figure. That’s what people want, I guess.

A good CEO has to drive the vision but also micromanage the details and fight the evil where it hides. Underneath a spreadsheet row or column, that is. If 40% of my revenues would leak before it reaches our bank accounts, I would go ballistic. This is why I see myself as the Chief Plumber Executive, one who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty and who is ready to lift every stone to make sure things are done right. If there’s a leak somewhere, I want to be the one who spots it first. I don’t trust my trusted lieutenants.

I like to get involved in a lot of minute details and this drives my staff totally crazy. Sure they’d prefer a CEO who’s not involved in the day-to-day stuff because they’d have more liberty to accomplish their task, and people don’t like it when someone is breathing down their neck.

But you know what? If nobody watches you then you become lazy like those veggies working for the City. You become so lazy that your assets crumble in ruins and nobody cares anymore. Someone has to run the circus and focus on the fundamentals. So my apologies if I make your life a living hell and you need to run every decision by me and only me. I guess you’d rather see me in a talk show discussing world events rather than checking your expense report, don’t you? That won’t happen. And the result is this.

This is what profitable growth is about.