Members Column Day : Interfacing with mere mortals

Dear FakeMike, I attended the CGI Annual Propaganda Tour a few times and it seems to me that upper management is more concerned with distributing a pre-packaged hollow speech than actually listening to what real “members” have to say. Membership has no privileges, really. When will management start to address real issues in this company? Stew from DC

Dear Dimwit, what you are witnessing is the wide intellectual chasm between upper management and sub-basement level employees. If you encounter a squirrel and try to explain quantum mechanics or 18th century poetry to the poor rodent, it would gaze at you in silence listening to your mumbo jumbo and hoping that this bulge in your pants is a bag of peanuts.

The annual tour brings a similar situation, we try to explain our strategic vision in very simple terms but we are acutely aware that the average intelligence level in the room is not able to grasp even the most basic principles behind our vast and elaborate thinking. Members hope there will be shrimps and free drinks at the end, so they listen to our speech patiently but their mind is in the buffet.

I mean, even if I explained you what The Plan is, you would not understand it. My mind has evolved into an advanced form where complex thoughts can be processed rapidly, and the downside of this amazing super power is that it is increasingly difficult for me to communicate with standard employees, even those empty shells acting as middle management. If I tried to tell you about The Plan, your mind would collapse from neurons over firing. You do not have enough processing power to grasp the intensity and depth of The Plan. Your IQ allows you to listen to shows like “Deal or No Deal”, but that’s how far your financial brain can go - and even then you don’t understand the probabilistic nature of the game.

As for your last sentence where you claim that management should address issues, maybe you should accept that there are no issues per se, just wrong perspectives. What you perceive as a problem is in fact a reality that you have a hard time processing. Upper management knows your brain has limited power, this is why we do not hold it against you. The annual tour is an attempt is package a very complex reality in small easy-to-process bites.

So I strongly encourage you to participate again in our annual tour, you will be reminded how great this company is, how lucky you are to live and breathe under our umbrella, that the future is paved with profitable bricks. And there might be shrimps.

Roach out.

One more tour, fellas

It's something I've grown to be more uncomfortable every year, but if we don't do it our members will think something is wrong with upper management. And it's not the jet lag or the crappy airport food that bothers me. What irks me about our annual tour is the constant reminders that we have to share with our business units, much like a father visiting his offsprings and having to teach them that excessive partying does not pave the way for a successful life.

I've talked to Serge about having a different kind of annual tour, where business unit leaders would visit ME instead of me touring the fucking world. I mean, did the King of France or England take the time to tour his country every year? No, all the Lords had to visit the king and disclose their financial performance and strategy to increase state revenues. Kings had to build huge war chests, I have to increase available cash and credit line to pursue more acquisitions. Kings chopped the heads of those who disagreed, I simply write a pink slip.

Serge being a sentimental guy, he likes to tour the world and have a good time. Me, I'd rather stay home crunching numbers.

So we agreed to crisscross the globe one more time, but we'll spend more time in U.S. cities where our newly acquired members from Stanley will build profitable growth. We need to be on the same page when it comes to expenses, and this is where my pen is mightier than the sword of the Kind of England. Yankees have this perspective of a French Canadian company where we enjoy the good life and have a very laid back approach. La joie de vivre, they say.

How little they know me.

Our annual tour is more like an annual crusade, where we restore financial control and HR discipline - German style - throughout the company. We inquire about why a particular business unit ranks below our financial objective, and if the explanations do not make sense - they rarely do - we sack the management team on the spot. Internally, we call this an Operation London Tower. If a business unit meets or exceeds the financial objectives, we congratulate them (briefly) and then we grill them on their plan to surpass themselves for the next fiscal year.

Now that you increased your revenues by 15%, you need to achieve 20% more next year. Cap your raises to 1%, yet maintain a turnover rate below 5%.

Sometimes, these bastards were just lucky with good market timing and they camouflage luck with their inflated capabilities, my sixth sense is quickly able to part bull from real talent. A market downturn is not an excuse to show lower revenues, only sissies would do that.

The key is not to have emotions. Those who do can't pursue profitable growth and are marred with difficult situations. Only by shedding all feelings from financial statements can one make an enlighten decision.

This is so not going to happen

There’s an old saying (circa 100 AD) that people just want “bread and circuses”, which is a metaphor for a superficial means of appeasement. In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the creation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace.

It’s been my experience that such craving for amusement has been transposed in large corporations where employees seek parties, freebies and free lunches instead of working.

In order to provide some kind of satisfaction to hard-working members, we created this “Star Performer Award” thing to reward less-lazy members who performed adequately. I mean, it’s really symbolic and it’s similar to your 1st grade teacher putting a red star sticker in your workbook because you managed to answer all the questions. I thought this kind of ceremony would be sufficient and employees would itch to get back to work to meet their BU sales target. How wrong I was.

With our upcoming Annual Tour 2010, I received a large number of circus-related requests from apparently mentally stable members. You could not believe all the ridiculous e-mails I got.

We should do a Rock Band contest during the annual tour

There is this weird tendency among young people to transpose whatever they are doing in their living room to the office environment. First, it was children picture on their desk, next it was casual dress, and now it’s full-blown entertainment at work in 1080i. I don’t see the point of this activity, I mean it’s not like I will go on stage and perform a song in front of other employees. For one thing, Rock Band does not have any song from Roy Rogers. I checked. Secondly, a singing CEO is likely to send a negative message to tight-ass institutional shareholders who view this kind of behaviour as a strong SELL signal. I don’t see myself performing humiliation rituals unless you serve me EDS for 5 cents a share, in which case shareholders can sit on it and spin.

My name is Rakesh from India and we plan to do a more ambitious dance than last year

Please, please, don’t remind me of this painful experience, my senses still hurt and I can’t eat Indian food without thinking about this freak show. Here’s the deal, I will send you Power Donna this year, I’ll stay home playing Scrabble with myself and I’ll let you rock with a senior VP. She likes this stuff. For a free demo, check her here at 1:01. I think she could fly if you asked her to.

Roach out.

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.

The annual tour is almost over

The past few weeks have been particularly exhausting, as I toured many of our offices in the U.S. and Canada. Picture above taken in L.A., I'm the fellow with the baseball cap on the left. I feel like an army general touring military locations, each time reminding my brainless soldiers of what’s important, how to behave, and what’s the big picture they should grasp. It ain’t easy, I’m telling you. I cannot count the number of time I had to answer questions concerning a possible merger of CGI with another big fat company. My answer was always the same : we’re analyzing different options, the market is good and we’re sticking to our plan.

It’s not a sexy answer, but CGI is not about fun or thrills, so anything exciting would be out of character. It’s like watching Kojak, you don’t expect Terry Savalas to dance the polka in the middle of an investigation. Or - for the younger crowd - you do not expect Patrick Stewart to snort a line of cocaine in the Enterprise ready-room.

We’ve done a couple of press releases recently, Yellow Pages for $100M, Daimler Financial Services, GSA for $32M. This is highly frustrating for me, because these are pretty fucking big announcements and Wall Street analysts could not care less. Our stock should be at $30, don’t you think?

Anyway. We’re releasing our 4^th quarter results and FY09 results on Nov. 9^th, and we’re coming on strong. Yes, dear members, you’ll get your $2000 profit-sharing bonus this Christmas unless our business unit screwed up – some of you did big time. Consider yourself lucky to have a job, and get back to work.

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.

Our annual tour is about to begin

Our annual tour is about to begin on October 8th, I can't tell how excited I am to visit our business units worldwide, spend time in budget motels (yeah, right) and give a corporate wedgie to those that do not return at least 15% of their revenues to the headquarter.

This is how CGI operates, each unit is a separate P&L and they must return a fair portion of their money to Montreal in order to survive. When they don't, I fly the location to discuss with the BU leader and I do my best to understand why this supposedly good middle manager cannot do his/her job. In some cases, the market has been very bad - shit happens sometimes - so I spare the life of the BU leader but I increase my expectations for the next year by 10%. Bad times do not go on forever, don't they?

The clip above is something I had a mind for the shameful units. We could launch bombers from space and nuke them, or build giant Terminator-like robots (like the one at 1:26) who could toast unprofitable employees at the CGI office.

My board advised against this scenario, as it could impact our share price - which is pretty high these days ($11.90 at closing time yesterday). Not because killing people is bad per se, but nuking a BU could spread harmful substances into the atmosphere and that would make us look bad - we could be dropped from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Sound advice, I say.