Back in therapy. Sigh.

With the sour announcement this week that Desjardins is kicking CGI's ass in April 2011, I am feeling awfully depressed - I tried watching a game of curling but it didn't cheer me up. I played bridge on my computer but that didn't do. I even tried listening to favourite tunes from Slim Whitman but even that didn't cheer me up. So I called Paul my therapist and asked if he had some time for me this week-end. Sure, he said, as long as you can pay me you are always welcomed.

So I go back to his office on Saturday, drops of rain were hitting my Mercedes like to punish me even further.

So how are you feeling Mike, my therapist asks. It's been a long time since I billed you.

I go, terrible, just terrible. I mean, you read the news, right? Desjardins is throwing us out the window, like an unfaithful husband after 10 years of marriage. CGI doesn't deserve this, I don't deserve this, GIB lost 3% on the TSX, Serge is calling me every hour to lecture me on how I fucked a profitable relation that he carefully put in place when he was the CEO.

Paul pulls out his iPhone and checks the stock chart for CGI. I see, this is really bad, Mike this is really bad, I gotta dump some at market price Monday morning. But let's get back to you feelings Mike, what do think happened?

I sink even further in the leather couch. You know, Desjardins is going through a major reorg and they want to move away from the mainframe platform. They say they burn too much money in IT, they want to cut 900 positions and save over $175M. Sure, there's a lot of bacon fat in IT but that's not a legitimate reason to put CGI in the garbage can, you know?

Paul grabs a copy of The Globe & Mail and scans one article about the CGI / Desjardins news. He goes, would it be possible that Desjardins' conscious desire to restructure their company is causing them to reconsider all prior decisions, even good ones? I see that in couple therapy, guy dumps the wife and then buys a new car even though the old one, the car I mean, was perfectly fine. It's called projection. You transpose your frustration into other entities.

Well, I go, I think we might have pushed our client toward bad decisions just to keep the gravy train rolling you know, the money was just too sweet and we never recommend a client to reconsider things like a mainframe or other goodies that keep the juicy contracts going. A mainframe is like a 24-hour rainbow with a pot of gold constantly replenishing itself, from the IT outsourcing standpoint that is. We don't want to kill the rainbow. We have loads of IT people specialized in mainframe technology.

Paul goes, so what are you going to do with those mainframe people when the contract will be over in April 2011?

I will fire them of course, what else could I do? But that's not the real issue. People are expendable. What matters is profitable growth, FY2011 will take a direct hit unless we find a mother load of outsourcing contracts in Poland or God knows where. Our company is structured for the investor to be happy as a clam, clients and employees are second-ranking beings. If I proceed with my accelerated path to profitable growth, I'll have to suffer the wrath of money managers everywhere.

Time's up, said Paul. Same time next week?

Sigh. Of course. Send me the bill.

About my recurring nightmares

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Another visit to my therapist

Had another appointment with Paul my therapist this Sunday, as you may remember last week I did an exposé on how to use middle managers efficiently and my therapist thought my perspective was just a mask for some hidden personal issues. He said I’m controlling people more than I can admit, and this attitude might be caused by the fact that I don’t trust anyone else but me. I was like, am I totally insecure, is that what you’re trying to insinuate? Do I look like a control freak?

I then explained why middle managers need to be tightly controlled and why such attitude is actually a good one. CGI has 100+ offices in 16 countries and we’re 26,000 employees total. So let’s say that for a large BU with 2600 employees, there would be at least 20 VPs and 200 directors, around 10% middle management. So total we might have around 2500 middle managers total at CGI.

If every middle manager is given the liberty of spending $100 on something – anything – this amounts to a quarter million dollars.

That’s a lot of money, said Paul. That’s right I said, you give each individual a tiny budget, and quickly it explodes into a massive expense that blasts a gaping hole into your bottom line and the next financial quarter. Then the CEO – that’s me – gets toasted by Wall Street analysts.

Paul seemed thoughtful again, and asked, but what if this $250 000 is actually an investment that could generate more revenues, you know, like training your people to better perform without having to ask middle managers for permission at every step of the process?

I knew this one, as I heard it thousands of time. “Give us a penny, we’ll transform it into a 20 dollar bill”. The world doesn’t work this way. Any internal investment is a major risk, and you need to manage this risk to make sure it returns something. And frankly, this is too much work because people tend to spend it on long term investments and the employee turnover rate is too significant to do anything long term. People will train themselves, only to go work for a competitor after 3 years. I mean, I spent 25 years at Bell Canada, I never knocked on a competitor’s door for another job, because.. well.. Bell had no competition as you know. Bottom line is, you can’t trust people to be at your service tomorrow morning, so a result I manage like there’s no tomorrow.

So you don’t invest anything in your middle managers, asked Paul, not a penny? Well, we do actually invest in them, military-type training to make sure time sheets are approved by Monday morning at 7 am. I like to come into my office at 8, open my laptop, and monitor billable time for each of our office. If a director does not approve the time sheets of its subordinate, he or she is severely humiliated by a local VP. I’ll spare you the details, but that usually does the job.

Our session was over, and Paul scheduled another appointment next week. I got the feeling that I said something wrong again during the session…

Saw my therapist this week-end

Saw my therapist on Sunday, just so you know. I know what you guys are thinking. Mike, you're the CEO of large corporation, why do you need to have your head examined? Should we worry about the stock price? Rest assured, yours truly is perfectly fine and my head is superb.

Serge says it's a Sarbanes-Oxley requirement to make sure the CEO is not living a psychosis while making strategic decisions. So I went to this guy, his name is Paul and I gotta say he's a very smart man.

Our sessions are pretty informal, I talk about CGI and our core values, why profitable growth is leading us to the future, why outsourcing is the right decision for a Fortune 500 company. Then I talked about why decisions need to be taken by a small core of people, and why delegating power is the straight road to perdition. Paul seemed amused by this nugget of management wisdom. Mike, he said, do you trust your lieutenants, I mean the hundreds of VPs and thousands of directors scattered in your business units? Of course I trust them, I said, I trust them to approve time sheets and maintain a tight grip on expenses so that each BU can return a huge share of their revenues to the HQ. Paul seemed thoughtful. You manage people Mike, he said, and yes while generating revenues is an essential part of your business, you should also consider that they are human beings.

Hold on buddy, I said, my middle managers are doing one thing - that is managing the middle. And the middle is just a conduit between our clients wallet and our company bank accounts. That's it. Of course once a year I hop into a plane and tour some of our less profitable BUs to kick their ass and spread the CGI gospel. But middle managers have too much expectations, they all think they will rule the kingdom one day. Truth is, they are the layer that we enjoy squeezing the most because they rarely complain. People at the bottom of the food chain have no expectations except a job. But those who venture past the lowest floor want to work triple hard and maybe one day have a shot at becoming a lazy ass in a corner office.

So we beat them with unrealistic expectations, tons of paperwork, no real power, and guess what - I always get a warm round of applause whenever we pack them in a room. What CEO could ask for anything more?

Paul didn't say much, but he said we should continue the therapy for a while. Shit, did I say something wrong?