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.