Halloween and CGI

There are a few things that bug me socially speaking, and my therapist said that I should address those issues before I turn 60. One of which is the whole Halloween thing, probably because I don’t have a sweet tooth but mostly because some of my employees enjoy dressing funny that day. I grind my teeth at the thought of lost productivity because employees who wear costumes are simply not focused on their work. I mean, how can you make strategic decisions when you’re dressed like a fucking clown? And even if you’re not in the Halloween mood, how can a man work when the girl next to him is dressed like the picture here?

Halloween gives me heartburns. When I see from my desk several costumed employees who chat around the water cooler, I check out how long they talk about their stupid attire and what kind of high-fructose syrup based candies they bought for their offspring. I then enter all those lost minutes in my spreadsheet and by then end of the day the numbers are just staggering. And yes, the CGI stock usually drops a few cents every Halloween day just to humiliate me even further.

Even worse, some of the girls at GMA put out decorations in their cubicles, Boris Karloff-esque figures, cardboard skulls and whatever orange/black crap they found at Wal-Mart. This drives me crazy as I can’t see the point of this entire charade.

So my therapist suggested I do a few things to help me manage this frustration, one of which is to host a small and inexpensive Halloween party at CGI. Employees are of course banned from wearing their silly outfit during daytime, but from 5pm to 7pm we do this cocktail where everyone can do the Halloween thing, eat cheap candies and pretend zombies roam the Earth. As a token of good faith, I will wear a costume myself just to demonstrate how human I am despite what people may think.

So I bought this great Darth Vader costume – it was on sale and I didn’t bill CGI for it. I think I’ll have loads of fun at the party, dropping innocent lines like I found your lack of faith disturbing to unsuspecting employees. I plan to do a small speech at the party to explain why the Death Star should have been managed by CGI, as Vader would have been smarter to outsource its IT systems to us and focus on managing the physical vulnerabilities of its physical environment. He appeared to have a massive budget yet I’m wondering what his business model is. If the Death Star doesn’t generate revenues, how does he manage to pay for operational costs? But I digress.

So I hope you’ll have fun this week-end, make sure that you don’t leave early on Friday and don’t forget to do your PSA time sheet.

Managing nepotism

Managing 26,000 employees in 100+ offices means that you cannot oversee every new hire, it can’t be done. So you have to trust those closer to you and delegate power down the line so that the director who’s 8 layers below has enough judgement to hire someone smart. The reality is, a company that big cannot be staffed with “A” people only. We’ve got “B” and “C” people, and some “D” retards who manage to be billable somehow.

If such was a fixed reality that doesn’t change over time, it would be a perfect world. However, some people wants to move upward in the CGI hierarchy and this is where things get dirty, I mean really dirty.

I believe a meritocracy, a system in which promotions and bonuses are given based upon talent and merit, is way too hard to manage and doesn’t factor the human side of life. People like to brownnose, employees want to suck up in order to get what they want, I mean it’s so funny to look at this from a CEO position.

Some people have wrongfully accused CGI of nepotism, because the word itself describes a system in which relatives get favours. I think cronyism would be a more accurate description of our management style.

Let’s take an example to show you how difficult it is sometimes to manage humans. John is a long time CGI employee, maybe 20 years. John is a total asshole, he treats people like shit, his ego is larger than a Humvee and it’s amazing he got this far with poor communication skills. Yet, he manages to meet his sales objectives year after year. John complies with every single CGI rule and spreads the gospel to other director who prefer a more liberal management style. John wants a VP position so he can persecute a larger pool of people and give his ego a corner office so he can brag about it. His wife is probably very submissive. John likes to drive expensive cars.

So when the prick asks firmly for a VP position and threatens to go to a competitor if he’s not getting it, what do you do? If Sucker John goes out, your revenues go down, you’re likely to miss your target for the financial year and nobody at your business unit will get a bonus. A real dilemna.

My decision would be to give the VP position to Mr. Dipshit because revenues are more important. Yes, the team morale will go down because they’ll see this total retard get a promotion while all the Mister Nice Guys get nothing. John’s a good soldier, and whatever downside he may have, how significant they can be, are offset by the fact that he brings money to CGI. Everybody has weaknesses, don’t we?

So deal with it and get back to work. Be more like John, try to beat his numbers an maybe 10 years form now you’ll get his office. John will be ready for the C-suite by then.

What I hate hardware

The very essence of CGI Group is about service - not products - and this is why we fight every day to push back hardware vendors who want to get in bed with us. Unless it’s for buying the company, in which case we’re ready to talk.

Case in point, I went to the men’s room this morning and I used the most pathetic hand dryer ever manufactured on this planet. Am I the only human being who thinks these hand dryers are total crap, yet they manage to be sold in shopping centers, offices, rest areas and countless places? It takes an eternity to dry your hands, it is so weak most people get annoyed after 10 seconds and rub their hands on their jacket on their way out. I’m so frustrated when I encounter a Nova hand dryer that if I had a hand gun I would shoot the miserable device, watch it go in flame and hear its tiny cheap motor die from systemic failure.

Of course there’s better, much better technology out there but you rarely see it . Tried it once, I was blown away. So simple, so elegant.

Now why is that? Why is Nova still alive when they keep manufacturing the worst hand dryer ever made? Why customers keep buying this shit? Because it must be dirt cheap, and my friends people like cheap products that perform badly. Nova knows this, and this is why they keep building their shitty hand dryers.

Humans have this weird relation with hardware. One can fork three grand for a set of 19” alloyed wheels that basically does the same function than standard steel wheel. Yet the same person will compromise on everything when buying a $400 netbook for work. Then this person will buy a $75 wine bottle when dining out with friends when he cannot taste the difference with a $9 bottle. And when this person has to choose hand dryers for a public restroom, he will pick the most inefficient device ever built.

You’ll be quick to point me to the fact that in the cases of alloyed wheels and wine the person’s decision was purely based on social enhancement factors, meaning looking good, attract the opposite sex and hopefully get laid. And I have to agree with you.

CGI doesn’t sell hardware because IT hardware doesn’t generally act as a social enhancement device. You rarely gloat about your firewall when dining out. When was the last time you picked a girl in a bar by talking about your choice of hardware vendor?

Who is she?

Who is this girl? We've been using this image for quite a few years in on the cover sheet of our PowerPoint deck. I should ask the marcom department instead of asking here, but there's something freaky about her that I just can't put my finger on. Maybe it's the forced smile. Maybe it's the way she looks at the photographer that gives me the creep. There's something odd about this picture. Does anyone share this uncomfortable feeling?

Implementing sacrifice-based management

If you can control people’s mind, you can push them to do virtually anything. Let’s say you’re the supreme leader of a population and you’re able to convince them that the current drought is due to some fussy god who didn’t receive his/her quarterly share of sacrifice, then it’s relatively easy to convince some hapless farmer to give his young daughter, who is then pushed into an active volcano and vaporized instantly. If the drought persists, repeat the process with someone more chubby as gods seem to favor high-fat content.

If the rain comes, then you can claim the gods are happy and that you are pretty effective in dealing with this kind of situation, and this reinforces the trust between you and the population.

Note to CGI managers: DO NOT throw resources into active volcanoes, they instantly become unbillable and HR must be notified.

My point is that one of the skill you need to develop – as a manager – is how to convince your staff to make sacrifices for the greater good. Greater good being anything that does not benefit your employees. When I talk about growing CGI to 100,000 employees, this is a good example of a greater good.

Now, how do you implement this? How can you push your people toward making great efforts without having any kind of reward attached to it? How can this achieved with minimal efforts from your part?

The idea of sacrifice is the business model of any organized religion, so a closer examination of religion management as a service industry would be beneficial. I think the core idea is to manage hope without promising anything tangible. Be vague, yet paint an idealistic portrait or an improbable future, people like that. Nobody saw the Garden of Eden, the literature on the subject is scarce and they have no Web site. Yet, people believe in it.

Let’s say you manage a couple of guys who are fed up with the way CGI acts toward them. First, acknowledge their frustration, this creates an initial bond with you and them. Next, talk to them about what the company could be in the future. Promise anything that doesn’t sound too wacky. Like, they could be part of a special group which might report directly to the business unit top VP. This is all bull of course, but this will bait them into believe that they are worthwhile. People desperately want hope. Once they are in this psychological state, they can be manipulated managed to perform a bunch of dull tasks without being paid for doing it.

If you are able to take your staff to this stage, make sure you maintain minimal communication with them. Since nothing will happen, it’s best for you to keep a low profile. Ignore their calls, forward their e-mails to a spam box. If they corner you, tell them that you highly appreciate their efforts and this will likely influence their performance review. Tell them that upper management will likely do something “soon” about whatever you promised. The whole idea is to maintain hope.

Obviously the scam cannot be maintained indefinitely, so at some point you’ll need to tell them that the “special project” has been discarded by upper management but that is was nevertheless a “clever idea” and they have been “visible” to some very influential people at CGI. Repeat the process with different buzzwords.

Work makes one free

This is French only but I wanted to post this because I think it's totally awesome. Our members at Quebec City did the following video to boost how happy they are to work at CGI. Pregnant woman? Check. Use of minorities? Check. Smiling faces like they just got laid? Check. How can you be so joyful when you toil all day in a government cubicle? This is joie de vivre. These guys deserve a medal. Nah, just a big round of applause - it costs nothing.

The Canadian PM called

PM as in prime minister, not project manager. Although I think Canada would be better managed these days by any freaking idiot with a PMI diploma. Look at this guy.

When George W. Bush was president of the United States it was difficult to find the head of country who looked more inapt. So during those years our dorky Canadian PM looked actually smart, but that was before the American economy tanked and the world was fedexed to hell. Now that Obama runs the Oval Office, our PM looks pretty much like a hack actor who doesn’t look convincing enough to get a infomercial job.

So Stephen called me last night, enquiring about CGI. When a politician asks you an open question, you can bet your pants that he has a long detailed agenda hidden underneath the seemingly naïve question. Never trust those guys. So I go, well CGI is fine our stock is up, our members are happy.

Stephen seemed to totally ignore my response and went straight to the point. Michael he says, I heard rumours that you might sell CGI to a foreign company, I just wanted you to know that the Canadian government cannot let this happen. I’ve been in the hot seat for a long time and my political opponents especially the blue commies will kill me if I let another Canadian company be sold to foreign interests.

So I go, Stephen, CGI is a public company and we’re doing our best to make the investors happy. If making our investors happy means selling the company to Krispy Kreme then I’ll bring donuts to our board. Of course I'd like to sell CGI to Canadian interests, but let's talk frankly the buyers list is kinda short ya know? Nortel is being dismantled as we speak, Bell is slowing sinking to the bottom of the sea and there's not a single company between Vancouver and St John that has enough cash right now to buy us. So yes I'm shopping South if that's your question, and East too.

Stephen goes, what if we nationalize CGI Group, this would stabilize the situation and this could not be worse than the U.S. buying Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Voters would accept this.

I went ballistic, Stephen I said you're the son of accountant so maybe you'll get this straight. Shareholders expect their shares to perform you know, and right now we're not doing bad at all. Do you really think your voters will be stupid enough to trade CGI shares for saving bonds that perform less than the actual inflation? How do you manage to sell this crap anyway?

Stephen said that he had an emergency to deal with (maybe a new haircut), so he had to go and said that we should talk again soon. Sure I said.

Dealing with employees

Let's talk frankly. Dealing with employees is the most underestimated challenge of any manager, and it's not getting simpler down the road. A few decades ago it was so much easier, you'd take the employee out for steak and beer at a strip club, and he'd say to his wife how great a boss you were.

Nowadays if you take a Gen Y out for lunch, you'll be criticized if you pick something off the menu that doesn't fit her/her environment viewpoint. Chicken? Those were raised in a cage smaller that your plate. Steak? Man, you should watch your cholesterol. Salad? This salad doesn't come from a sustainable farm. How about a glass of water, no, wait, you'll tell me bottled water is so bad since it consumes plastic and as a by-product I make my country more oil-dependant, is that it? Dude, you're getting good, I like ya.

Also, taking employees to strip clubs is not CGI policy anymore.

Personal philosophy aside, the annual employee review is the opportunity for a manager to discuss with a consultant that has been out there in the field for a year. It's face time where you review all the mishaps, make sure the employee doesn't plan to quit anytime soon and set unrealistic objectives for the next 12 months.

Of course, you expect the employee to vent some of his frustrations with the company, the client, the crappy PC he uses, his amazingly stupid cubicle neighbour, the world in general and whatever comes to his mind. You - as a manager - must patiently listen to all this nonsense, nod a few times, and give the impression that you share his feelings. This is called empathy. You don't fucking care of course but the employee must not know.

The hard part comes when the employees expects something for his good work during the past year. You know my position on this. People in general expects way too much, so you as a manager need to lower that to the minimum. If you give the employee a 2% raise (which is the standard), he of course will try to bargain something. Don't let him. Tell him that the company had to work double hard this year to meet its sales objectives, and even though the business unit increased its revenues by 20% with the same number of employees there's no money left for raises above 2%. Try to act sincere. Tell him that you got the same kind of raise, and do your best to look clueless but not stupid.

If the employee still tries to bargain something even though you clearly said there was no room for anything else, tell him you'll talk to the VP about this. This closes the argument, and then a week later you send the employee a boilerplate e-mail saying that his request was declined (you don't need to ask the VP since you already know the answer, don't you?).

Dear employees, I am hearing you

Some of you might think that I’m some kind of a pompous monarch highly perched into his ivory tower, overlooking the world in his luxurious office while sipping a cup of Earl Grey and enjoying a self-given sense of superiority and excellence. This couldn’t farther from the reality.

Yes I plan to wear a Darth Vader outfit for Halloween ’09 but this has nothing to do with my ego, the outfit happened to be on sale.

Truth is, I’m just a regular guy who followed the path and the path happened to lead to a CEO position. And starting from today I am creating a “Dear Abby” kind of column where CGI employees throughout the world can open their heart, talk about issues at work and I’ll be taking a hold-no-prisoner attitude toward them. They can go ballistic on me and I will listen. This is what a CEO should do, isn’t it? I mean, it’s better to whine here than posting your rants and salary on Glassdoor.com or RateMyEmployer.ca because there's someone who will listen to you.

Let’s take our first message, this is from a HR person whose identity will not be disclosed. Let’s call her Susie.

CGI acts toward its employees the same way cell phone companies are acting toward customers. Massive efforts are done to lure new customers, but existing and loyal customers are totally ignored. What could you do to improve this?

Susie here seems to have a point, but she does not when you work through the numbers. Luring new employees into our web requires great effort because – as I stated in an earlier post – CGI is not really cool per se and the job itself is as exciting as cleaning road kills on the highway. So investing a few lunches and career fair activities to capture a revenue generator (a new employee) that will bring in net profit tens of thousands of dollars a year to CGI is a safe investment.

So what do we do with existing employees? Well, nothing because the numbers do not add up. Let me tell you why.

There are a bunch of employees, which I call the 1^st tier, who will stay with you for years even though you totally ignore them, assign them to dull projects and give them ridiculous raises. They are the fat gooses who produce large golden eggs, except you don’t need to feed the goose or clean and heat the barn. Those employees might eventually go to a competitor only to realize it’s the same situation over there, so they come back to you begging for work, you hire them back and then you can completely abuse them for another 10 years or so. Sounds easy? It is.

The 2nd tier of employees is the “high-maintenance” one, they request a lot of attention on your end, they may work a lot but they expect something in return (like bonuses, promotions, taking part in strategic decisions and asking exceptions to corporate rules - yuck!). Fortunately, this tier is made up of much less people. You don’t invest anything in them because eventually they’ll come into your office and politely tell you to fuck yourself, and you’ll never see them again. So why bother investing in this tier too?

Bottom line is, the way we work now is a best practice and our spreadsheets are there to prove it. So to answer Susie’s letter, there’s nothing we can do to improve perfection.

Friends, please send your question to fake mike roach (at) gmail dot com with “Dear Abby” in the subject line. See you soon.

The audacity of cost-cutting

Today I’m writing you from our New York office, this stop during our annual is actually significant since we merged last year our Boston unit with our NY unit to create the NorthEast unit. Boston actually manages NY and folks here are sometimes taking it personal.

The fact that I stated that I’m a Red Sox fan didn’t help. I should be more cautious next time.

Everywhere I go during the annual tour I am giving our business unit leader an evaluation of their effort to minimize non-billable expenses. In theory, any expense should be billable. Sadly, CGI needs to sometimes pay for things that don’t get charged to a project. It’s like common cold, syphilis or mid-life crisis, you do your best to avoid it but sometimes you wake up one morning with it.

I give my BU leaders a note ranging from 1.0 (you’re a high-maintenance office, like dude is there a masseuse on your staff?) to 5.0 (you are a CGI role model, you manage pennies and there’s a framed picture of Scrooge McDuck on your desk – a picture that you paid with your personal money of course). Most business units range from 3.7 to 4.2, but this year one office managed to rank 4.32 which is a company record.

So the during the annual tour it’s natural for BU leaders to ask me for guidance when it comes to implement a cost-cutting culture inside their organization. I was walking on the 7^th floor of our Hanover office yesterday and I saw an employee using a coffee machine. He used no coins to operate the coffee machine. So I asked one of the VP, like what’s going on here, employees are getting a free cup of joe whenever they want? Free milk too? Jesus-Christ do you have any freaking idea of what you’re doing here?

The now blushing VP told me that this was a small perk that didn't cost much, and they managed to buy the cheapest brand with an additional discount. So I wacked the guy with my umbrella in front of his lieutenants, telling him that from now on employees must pay for coffee. By doing so, you transform something that costs you money into something on which you make a profit. If a cup costs $0.22 to brew, charge $0.75 and advertise that CGI is now using a premium brand. Switch to another cheap coffee brand manufactured in China and put an environment spin to the story.

If all my 26,000 employees are drinking one free cup of coffee each day, that’s $5720 per day worldwide! Start charging for the acrid beverage, and you’re now putting $13780 per day into CGI’s pocket. That’s over $2.7M in net profit a year!

If you’re even smarter, you stop buying milk and sugar. People will drink it black or they will bring CoffeeMate from home.

As a token gift, I am giving all my business unit leaders a pocket calculator with the CGI logo on it (another non-billable expense, sigh). Start using it today.

Intrapreneurship as seen through CGI glasses

Last night in Paris was memorable, our CGI members took us to the Moulin Rouge after the formal meeting where we had a very nice evening. There was a girl named Loulou who did one heck of a show. Too bad she’s not into system integration, I would hire her right away. Serge and I sang the Marseillaise in the cab on my way back to the hotel. Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrive!

Our tour d’Europe is unfortunately over, I’m heading back today to the U.S. to continue our annual tour. During our formal meeting with the Paris VPs, I emphasized why intrapreneurship is so ingrained in the CGI culture. I used a slide from a standard presentation that we do:

Our success is based on the competence, commitment and enthusiasm of our members. Therefore, we promote a climate of innovation and initiative where we are empowered with a sense of ownership in supporting clients, thus ensuring the firm’s profitable growth. Through teamwork, sharing our know-how and expertise, we bring the best of CGI to our clients. As members, we share in the value we create through equity ownership and profit participation.

This carefully written paragraph is full of gems when you spend time analyzing it, I’m actually very proud of this. For one thing, we were able to plug a wide collection of buzzwords in just 6 lines: competence, commitment, enthusiasm, innovation, initiative, empowerment, ownership, profitable growth (love this one), teamwork, know-how, expertise, value, profit participation – just to name a few.

The whole paragraph is of course meaningless because it surfs on so many concepts, but that’s the beauty of it. The average reader will go through the paragraph and then think: Holy mackerel, where in this paragraph does CGI actually talk about intrapreneurship?

Wiki says that intrapreneurship is the practice of using entrepreneurial skills without taking on the risks or accountability associated with entrepreneurial activities. Employees, perhaps engaged in a special project within a larger firm are supposed to behave as entrepreneurs, even though they have the resources and capabilities of the larger firm to draw upon. Capturing the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial management (trying things until successful, learning from failures, attempting to conserve resources, etc.) adds to the potential of an otherwise static organization without exposing those employees or self employed people to the risks or accountability normally associated with entrepreneurial failure.

Please note that the keywords used in the paragraph above are entirely different from CGI’s definition: risks, special project, entrepreneurs, resources, dynamic, potential and failure. The dreaded F word.

Why the difference you ask? Fact is, CGI is defining its own version of intrapreneurship, one that does not involve risks, resources or entrepreneurial spirit because those are bad ugly things especially from an accounting perspective. Simply said, the CGI intraneurship is about putting unpaid hours into something that doesn’t get billed to any client. Period.

We consider that this extra work is your contribution to CGI, that’s right. We give you a day job and in return you scratch our back by working nights and week-ends.

This - my friends - is intrapreneurship. There’s no risk involved, there’s no real reward too, and we make you feel guilty if don’t do like the others. And by guilt, I mean it’s nothing hard, but you know if you’re a director and want to become a powerless VP you’ll need to work your ass off. Regular sickness is one good sign you’re working well.

Have you been bleeding, lately?

What if CGI acquires another company (part 2)

A short post today, I’m visiting our Paris office, the French have such a way with protocol - and I'm not talking IP. They’re not bad though, I’ve been told I would be treated tonight with some exquisite French cuisine and more wine than my liver can absorb. Vive la France!

More thoughts on the Eat vs Being Eaten talk that goes on these days during our annual tour. Our business units leaders are always asking when CGI will be sold, what will happen to them if we’re integrated into a larger monster like IBM or Cisco and what kind of golden parachute they can get if such a thing happen. Everyone knows that this day will eventually come, and all eyes are on me to provide an answer. Be patient, CGI members, Michael is leading you on a journey through the desert, and after 40 days and 40 nights we will arrive to a wonderful oasis. That or we'll spend the next 20 years with a stock price between $9 and $12.

Personally, I’d love to take CGI up to 100,000 employees but I have to say that I sometimes don’t think such goal is reachable. Like I said in my previous post, acquiring a competitor is a lot of work and involves kicking a lot of asses. I know, because I kicked more butts when we acquired AMS than a typical football coach does in a lifetime. I’m telling you, folks, it ain’t easy. My shoes are so worn.

The CGI dream and what to make of it

This morning I’m writing you from my hotel in Madrid, we flew last night from Heathrow, we had a grand time with our UK staff. All I can say is this: Glenfiddich 50 years. But man, how am I going to continue partying last this for another 4 weeks? Hopefully I can sell CGI before the annual tour ends.

Speaking of CGI, I want to address today something that is very dear to me. The Dream.

Any large corporation has its fair share of bullshit when it comes to mission statements and objectives. We at CGI do actually more than that, because we have a dream. Of course the content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, so you must take our dream at face value. Our dream statement goes like this:

"To create an environment in which we enjoy working together and, as owners, contribute to building a company we can be proud of."

We carefully explain what you can expect from our dream in a corporate statement:

It goes without saying that creating this type of environment is particularly challenging in consulting companies such as ours. Personnel generally work at client locations, making it difficult to develop a sense of belonging through a shared workplace. There is the risk of certain people being "forgotten" when they spend long periods at a client site, and this risk is amplified when these individuals have few CGI colleagues working on the same engagement.

The thing is, being forgotten is not a risk, it is an absolute certainty. Don't take this in a personal way, but we really don’t want to hear about you as a person, all we care is about is your billable rate. Once we know your rate and you’re tagged on a project (preferably for years), our internal processes and forms take care of you much like Neo’s body is lifted by snake-like creatures at the end of The Matrix Revolution. You may be human, but a corporation is not and never will be, so by definition any effort trying to prove the contrary is doomed to fail.

Problem is, this dream thing was put forward years ago when CGI was still a small company and Serge entertained the romantic idea of a “human” company. Since then we grew considerably, middle management happened and the natural instinct to kill anything fun and human was too overwhelming to resist. Creative people with initiative are always pushed out by stiff technocrats, it’s the corporate Circle of Life. Some people say this stage is the death of an organization, I say it’s the coming of age – you grow out of childhood one day or another and you become an adult and you start filling forms. And adults know their dreams are just fantasies.

Yet, I like to talk about the dream during the annual tour because it’s a powerful way to escape hard questions. If someone asks me about putting less pressure on sales and more on trying to keep on own people, I always start a long spiel on CGI dream. Once people are flooded with wishful thinking they become more hesitant in confronting me.

Cast away

The CGI annual tour is no excuse for skip my weekly therapy, so I had a long conference call with Paul from my hotel in London. I literally have a bag of ice sitting on my head, thanks to the generosity of our CGI members in Poland. I asked my therapist to speak very softly, the faucet in the hotel bathroom is leaking and it’s making an awful lot of noise.

Back to the therapy. I have the strong impression that Paul is trying to use our sessions for me to say repressed feelings that I have toward my middle managers. This time he asked me how VPs were picked, in other words who were the worthy to get a corner office.

I used a metaphor to depict the different stages of promotion at CGI by comparing how Tom Hanks escaped the deserted island in “Cast Away”. Paul thought it was a funny idea and encouraged me to expand on that.

When you are a regular employee, you live on an island totally isolated from the world. We call you a member but you’re really all alone by yourself. You imagine what the CGI world is like, but you really don’t have a clue because we’re not allowing you this perspective except through press releases and carefully written intranet news.

When you’re a director, you’re like on a cheap raft trying to fight the crashing waves near the shore. You want to escape the island, but chances are the tsunami of red tape will push back on the shore. That is, unless you’re very persistent. Not bright, but persistent. It might take 20 years of suffering and humiliation but eventually you might get through. Sometimes the odds will be so stacked against you and no matter how much you brownnose upper management the waves will always push you back.

When you’re a VP, this means you were able to pass through the brutal forces of the crashing bureaucratic waves and you’re now floating on your raft on the ocean. It’s quiet, you don’t have to work as much unless a storm comes by (like, revenues are declining). You can drift like this your entire career, as long as your business unit sends us a fair share of its revenues - it’s okay with us.

When you migrate from VP status to a more powerful position at CGI headquarter, it’s like your raft was picked up by a luxurious yacht owned by a billionaire. You drink champagne in a spa surrounded by bimbos, you enjoy the good life and the world could go down in flame you couldn’t care less. You made it to the top (well almost) and you deserve such treatment because you were a good soldier all your professional lfe.

Bottom line is, middle management is like anything starting with “middle”, it’s an unstable position and the forces of nature work against you. But it’s for your own good, I see this challenge as a character test. I mean, you can stay on the island all your life, nobody forces you to escape it. Want to escape the island? Well, you’d better enjoy the taste of salty water.

Same time next Sunday asked Paul? Of course I said. Sigh.

I secretly wish we could taste like chocolate

Today I’m writing you from Poland as our annual tour continues. My brain is still floating in German lager from yesterday, and I expect Chopin and Belvedere to be the main course tonight. Good thing my assistant Natalie takes notes during those meetings because I don’t remember a thing.

This is a recent article about CGI Group, I have to say that this is fairly accurate except when it comes to comparing our excellence with “plain vanilla”. Again, this comes with the whole notion of high expectations that people have in general, everyone wants Tangy Strawberry, New York Fudge and Blueberry Madness flavors when plain vanilla does the job – and it’s cheaper to manufacture. From the article:

Additionally, some competitors provide their own hardware solutions, which creates customer lock-in potential (and add-on profits) that CGI cannot boast.

Damn, I already told you I do not sell copiers! Don’t you see how big an advantage that can be? The advantage is focus, sharp focus on our people (and their billing rate). I could sell you vending machines with a middleware specialist, would that make you happy? No.

As I wrote earlier this week, I know hardware is just an excuse to dump high mark-up people in a long, long service contract. If someone is ready to pay $30+ a share for CGI I’ll be happy to sell you lawn mowers, turbines or adult toys for what I care.

Gotta go meet my Polish VPs. Talk to you later. Need Tylenol.

Note to HR: Do a marshmallow test

One of the hardest concept to implement inside a company is deferred gratification, as opposed to get a cash instant cash bonus. I overheard something in the men's room today about the Stanford Marshmallow Study, where you test kids to act on their impulses (eat the marshmallow now) versus deferring the gratification (wait 20 minutes, and you'll get two marshmallows instead of a single one).

I'm writing this on the blog before I forget it, we're having quite a party with the CGI Germany unit. Note to HR: we need to implement a CGI version of the marshmallow test to screen bozos and obnoxious Gen Y people.

Here's how it should work: You get employee to choose between the two following: either get your full profit-sharing bonus in '09, or wait another year and you will have 1.6 shares in 2010.

Normal people will automatically think that they should get 2.0 shares the next year since they'll skip a year there it's 1.0 + 1.0 share the next year, right? Smart asses will ask for 2.10 shares because of compound interests. Typical Gen Y youths will ask for 25.0 shares because they deserve it - period. Stupid people will think 1.6 shares every two year is better than 1.0 share every year. The latter should be fired and discreetly sent to competitors.

Our annual tour begins today - first stop, Germany

Yes dear members I am starting today our annual tour where Serge and I tour our business units worldwide during 5 grueling weeks. This has been a tradition at CGI since 1976, although at the time the whole thing was about Serge driving from Montreal to Quebec to Chicoutimi in his beat-up Volkswagen while listening to 8-track tapes. Nowadays we’re touring the globe in a private jet.

Our annual theme this year is “turning challenges into opportunities”, a theme that can used to address any possible situation under any circumstances. Increasing your revenues by 20% in a depressed market is a challenge that can be seen as an opportunity. Same thing with taking people on the bench and throwing them on the street. It’s a matter of perspective, and when you're hesitating nothing brings more perspective than a spreadsheet.

Today I’m in Germany where I am writing you from my trusted Blackberry (not an iPhone mind you) while waiting for my schnitzel to be served. Starting our annual tour in Germany in October is no coincidence.

Trust me when I tell you that this marathon is absolutely exhausting. Of course we don’t stay at the local Motel 6, but every night we have a 7-course dinner with our local BU leaders, discuss strategies to squeeze our cash cows and drink wine/beer/vodka/port until we pass out. When you’re in your 20’s, such regimen is business as usual, but even for a fit guy in his 50’s like me this is like climbing the Kilimanjaro barefoot while smoking Cubans.

When I’ll get home in Montreal I’ll have a few days off, drink milk and watch re-runs of Kojak just to chill out. Bald guys make great heroes, don’t they?

I’ll keep you posted as we tour the world in search for more revenues. I’m having a field day. Roach out.

No iPhone for CGI members

We learned yesterday that Bell will launch its new high-speed packet access (HSPA) network next month, and to celebrate this event Bell customers might be able to offer the iPhone to its angry customers. It’s not official yet, but everyone can imagine Bell is eager to whack Rogers and its iPhone monopoly. Telus might join the fight soon as well.

Of course I expect my mailbox to be full by the end of the day with requests from CGI members asking to get an iPhone from Bell as soon as it comes out. CGI members get their company phone from Bell since they are a client of us. You scratch our back, we scratch yours, it's like business is done.

What’s wrong, don’t you like your Canadian-made Blackberry? I like my Blackberry, since it allows me to send e-mail to my staff during the night and I expect them to read it of course.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the iPhone is a nifty piece of technology but it doesn’t fully serve the CGI mission. For one thing, there’s no enterprise server. And the enterprise server is yet another excuse to sell consultants to a customer. Remove the server, and you remove possible revenues. I hate that.

So before you send me e-mail stating your love of Apple technology, consider the impact of the iPhone on CGI. Meditate on this for a while. Could a less expensive technology better serve our dream and mission? What about our partnership with Microsoft? Could Steve Ballmer be offended by our attitude toward Apple? At a time when CGI might sold for a large sum of money. Hum?

Think about that before you bug me with your childish requests. Please.

You got Njoyned

It’s a shame employees nowadays are disgusted with the idea of serving 25 years at a single company, they think jumping ships is the quickest way to increase their salary and get promotion. And don’t get me started on those Gen Y youths, they deserve to get their butt kicked hard and… wait… Mike, control yourself, you need to refrain your negative energy. Ok, deep breath, exhale, feeling better now.

Today I’d like to talk to you about how to block unsatisfied employees of leaving your company. Let’s say that there's this kid, let’s name him John, and he’s 25 and doing a good job but he thinks he can get a 10% raise by moving to Desjardins, Bank of Montreal, Bell or anywhere which happens to be one of our outsourcing client.

John’s obviously stupid because he’s already working at CGI, a company whose excellence and values cannot be topped, so he’s already at the best place but John doesn’t see this. Blame his inexperience.

John sends his resume to this company X, but wait, who’s managing this company’s infrastructure? That’s right. John’s resume is tapped by our CGI supersensors located deep into the client’s network and the resume is routed to the Njoyn database where CGI has private access. Our clients are told to report any defecting CGI member. If they don’t, well it’s the game where you tell the client that they have a beautiful infrastructure with tons of server containing sensitive data, and of course it would be bad if something happened. Like, really bad.

So John goes from disgruntled to depressed because he never get any interview or job offer, thanks to our super Njoyn system. Wink, Wink. We introduce self-doubt in the employee so he’s ready for the next phase.

Every week our senior HR guys take a look at this database in their secret room (pictured above) and discuss what treatment should be given to those who dare considering leaving CGI. We don’t beat them WWE-style, of course. We typically reassign the employee to a project where he has to work all alone with very little human contact – from CGI or the client – for a very long period of time. This solitary confinement is an opportunity for the CGI employee to meditate and to begin an inward journey where he/she discovers how much our company has to offer – on our terms of course.

Simply said, the grass cannot be greener elsewhere, because CGI is the grass company.

If you’re not already a CGI client, you’d better firewall your own resources with military-grade control because they will evaporate like free beer on a hot summer day. Instead of trying to do it yourself, why don’t you give a call – I have Njoyn brochure ready for you.

Innovation is so overrated

If mankind's history can be used to examine how innovations are integrated into society, one could say that human beings have always been pretty much satisfied with what they have at any time period and that the need for new products has been massively overrated ever since the wheel has been invented.

I’ve been giving a lot of thinking about Xerox buying Affiliated Computer and the previous acquisitions, as there’s a significant shift going on from product to service. We live in interesting times.

The reason is quite simple. Nowadays products are so freaking complex that you need an army of technicians, analysts and project managers just to make software work. Even more so, just the task of explaining what a product actually does is now a science in itself, and if you doubt me go check how Microsoft explain what Windows 7 is about.

And the reason for product complexity is not technology evolution per se but rather the inability for any organization to simplify and streamline. Check into any government organization and examine how they operate. They are totally inefficient, each department is a silo, people are not given clear objectives and the whole boat runs amok. It was like this 25 years ago, it is like this now, and it’ll be identical 25 years from now. So if this organization wants to implement a CRM or any kind of middleware, the product must be fundamentally complex to match all the non-sense processes going on in the organization.

How do you implement this? Well well well you call IT consulting companies like CGI. We’ll send you a cargo full of specialists charging hundreds of dollars per day so that you can implement this poorly designed software that you bought from the snake oil salesman. Then after 3 years you’ll realize you bought a fucking lemon and you’ll go back to the fruit market hoping to buy a better lemon.

Does this sound familiar? If you’re older or educated enough to recall how the world worked in the 60’s, it’s pretty much the way information technology was during the golden days of the Mad Men era. Companies bought costly mainframes from IBM, and Big Blue delivered a thousand pounds of transistors on your door along with buses and buses full of pricey consultants. Boxes are cheaper today but we shifted margins on service.

My point is that customers don’t need innovation, they may want it but they certainly don’t need it. Innovation is confusing and involves thinking and changes. Innovation is essential because the economy would stop dead in its track without it. Customers just want the freaking box to work so they can go home at 5, drink wine, watch TV and have sex. Peace of mind is priceless.

The box was bigger and heavier in the 60’s, now it’s smaller. If less is more then how you keeping score, sang Eddie Vedder. Well you keep score by selling people to your customers, the more you can sell the better your financial quarter will be. Innovation is completely irrelevant. Your customer wants expertise on beige boxes, you provide a beige box specialist. If the trend shits to black boxes, you provide someone whose expertise involves darker colors. As a CEO, all you need to know is what colors are in demand. That’s it.

For an industry to be profitable, the product has to amazingly complex but insignificant in the global realm of things.

I’m still awaiting your resumes. Together we can service the world.

Yet another therapy session

I was back for a session with my therapist this Sunday. Again, we focused on my supposedly negative attitude toward middle managers, as Paul seems to think there’s something lurking in my subconscious and it’s not a cigar.

Paul, I said, despite what you may be thinking I have very positive attitude toward my middle managers. We care about them because we have forms and processes in place where they play a crucial role, isn’t what love is about? Let me emphasize my point by giving you a very down-to-earth example.

We have this “CGI 101” thing, it’s a 3-day brainwashing mandatory session for all our directors. Imagine that, they don’t bill their clients for 3 CONSECUTIVE DAYS and they get no punishment for that, to me that’s unheard of. So we pack them in a hotel room and paint an exquisite image of CGI, our values, our dream, what role they serve in the grand scheme of things. They watch about 750 PowerPoint slides in 3 days and we use 10 points fonts to make sure we cram everything important. Profitable growth is mentioned every 3 slides to make sure our directors get the message.

We plan seatings an advance, so that the guy/gal next to you is from another city and or country and you can exchange on business topics. So you start talking about your boring project that’s going nowhere and is over budget and your client is completely nuts, and you’re startled when the other person says a similar story. My my, I though I was the only one poor schlep stuck in a hell hole. So you share some more, talk strategies, and by the end of the session you feel damn good even though you’re still stuck in the same hopeless position. If you’re lucky you can get laid but I’ve been told that’s rarely the case

In case we regroup around the same table a bunch of negative minds who could end up convincing themselves to leave the company after a few drinks, we hire “stunts” and we assign one to each table. They are professional actors who are paid to act like CGI employees and they tell rosy stories about their job, they will criticize lightly the company management – just enough to sound believable – but they will always conclude that CGI is the greatest company on this side of the galaxy. Therefore, people with negative attitudes will be compelled to take another look at themselves, and maybe the CGI 101 training will prevent them from giving their resignation.

Some people might say we’re using questionable tactics to manipulate our middle managers, but we’re investing 3 freaking days in those sessions. That’s a shitload of money if you take into account the actors, room rental, sandwiches, coffee, slide projector, paper pads and CGI pencils. So having stunts is just a way to boost the morale of our troops, and make sure they spread the gospel when they get back home.

Paul said we still have a long way to go in this therapy and made another appointment next Sunday. Damn.

What if CGI acquires another company?

As you all readers probably know, CGI is on a journey to do an acquisition that will strengthen our core business and provide customers with more value-centric strategic business solutions. In simpler terms, it will increase our earnings.

Serge and I were going last night over some potential targets this morning, and locations were always a key issue. Let’s say that there’s this good IT firm in Chicago, Boston or New York with $50M in revenues that does basically the same shit that we do, they’re up for sale because the founders are fed up with managing morons, they want to cash in and retire to the Bahamas so that they can drink margaritas for the next 20 years.

If we buy this firm and CGI already has a location in this town, the burden to integrate their employees with ours is a major challenge. You start by managing egos and who will report to whom, of course 75% of the new staff will be pissed off because 50% won’t get a promotion, another 25% will report to a new person who doesn’t care about their past corporate culture and the remaining 25% is pretty much brain dead.

Then it’s this make-believe part when we pretend that their corporate culture would be a nice addition to the CGI way, when in reality we couldn’t care less and can’t wait to integrate their employees into our billing system. Time is of the essence, so we usually deploy a PeopleSoft SWAT team within 4 hours following the press release about the acquisition so we can merge their billing and HR processes into ours.

This forced marriage is obviously doomed to fail and our goal is to retain 10-15% of the original staff after 3 years and 95% of their customers. If CGI is already the dominant player in the city, then those numbers are usually lower. So it’s a lot of effort on our end to drive this profitable growth, our employees do not realize how much work we’re putting into this when we know in advance the train is heading toward a cliff. But so is the price of buying a competitor.

An option of course if to acquire a company that has offices in places where CGI is not already present. We’re considering places like Turkistan, Uzbekistan and other remote places whose idea of information technology revolves around distributing AK-47 maintenance manuals on Torrent. The downside is, local government regularly tortures people for a bunch of reasons, and if you have employees detained for political motives they become not billable to your customers (unless the customer is the same government body that tortures them, then it’s something we would include in the contract to recoup any potential loss).

Note to self: check the classifieds this week-end under Business for sale.

We're here! We're here!

Those guys at Seeking Alpha deserve a round of applause for boosting CGI's visibility. Read here. Money quote: Dell valued Perot at $30 a share, which represents trailing multiples of 30x price earnings, 1.56x revenue and 13x EBITDA. Using the same multiples for CGI would mean a takeout price between $20-$30 (Canadian - the shares were trading for $12.84 Monday afternoon).

Holy Jumping Catfish! 30 bucks !

Steve Ballmer never called me back, maybe I should e-mail him this link don't you think? That would set a opening price for negotiations. I need to talk to those Cisco guys, which reminds me something. A guy called my office the other day, I thought he was trying to sell me switches and I told him to get lost. His name was Chambers, and now this name rings a bell...

16% of our staff is completely dumb

CGI Group's basic belief is that, when you own something, you simply take better care of it. Proof is, when you get a rental car for a week you allow yourself to drive recklessly, do off-road in the desert and eat quarterpounders while driving. You might even drop a dead body in the trunk and disregard any permanent coloration and odours it could leave. You don’t care, because it’s not yours.

So we’ve put in place a plan where employees can purchase company shares traded on the public market (up to 2% of their salary for regular employees) and CGI chips in for the same amount. Bottom line, you buy one share and you get one free. It’s a great program, there’s no vesting period so you can sell the stock at any time and pocket the profit. We’re actually fucking generous if you ask me.

So as an employee, you own a share of the company, and the idea is that you’ll take care of it (the company, not the shares stupid). Ownership creates a deeper, more personal involvement and brings incremental value to all stakeholders.

So as an outsider, you’d figure Jee, ALL CGI employees must be shareholders, their company is giving them FREE SHARES they can sell at ANY TIME.

Wrong. Only 84% out of 26,000 employees actually benefit from this voluntary program, meaning 16% of our staff is simply saying NO to free money. I’ve been giving a lot of thinking about these numbers, trying to figure out why someone would decline our stock purchase program. Do they think the stock market is a creature of Satan and money is evil therefore the less they get the better they feel? That might be it.

The other hypothesis is that a sizeable portion of our employees is simply dumb beyond all explanations, yet they manage to be billable. If we had 5 douchebags like this worldwide, my mind would be at ease. But 16%? That's 4160 douchebags. It’s a not a constant number throughout the company, some business units have a much lower rate (closer to 1-2%), but some BUs are just off the chart. Could it be the water? Could there be a deep cultural thing where owning shares of the company you work for goes against Buddha’s philosophy?

50,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong, but apparently 4160 of our employees are wrong. If you know the motives more than I do, please give me a cue.