The workplace and the entertainment world

I was sitting in the porch last night, enjoying a Labatt Porter after an excellent pot roast, when my mind traced an interesting parallel between today's workplace and the entertainment business.

50 years ago, when you went to see a movie or buy a record, men were real men. Gene Kelley had grace. Sinatra had style. Miles had talent. Slim was the king. Same with gals. Andrews. Bergman. Gosh I love her.

Power up your large plasma screen tonight and analyze what you see. Lindsay going in and out of rehab. John & Kate showing their so-called misery to millions of brain dead viewers. Talent-free people singing off-key during prime time. And when you thought you'd hit the bottom of the barrel, you discover her.

Ladies & gentlemen, our world is being UPSed to hell. But you should not be learning anything at this point.

The parallel with the workplace creates a daunting perspective. 50 years ago the business environment was very different than what we see today. People had objectives. Ruthless tycoons were sweeping the world and pushing products and services to the marketplace in less time than it takes to finish a whiskey sour.

Today's business world is so complicated that J.P. Morgan would abandon the idea of building a nation-wide railroad system. Government would require to rubber-stamp every rail and nail before it is laid down. The idea of charcoal-driven locomotive would be shot down by environment fanatics with no college degree. J.P. would spend his days talking about Sarbox or PCI-DSS compliance instead of nailing down his competitors in the mud.

You don't believe me? Look at the time it took me to acquire Stanley, and ask yourself how long it would have taken someone during the Rockefeller-days.

People with no talent have infiltrated every sphere of our world. And talent-free individuals clog our way of living and doing business. 42% of all workers in Quebec are unionized. Eventually, the prevalence of morons should lead to the destruction of the world. Stupidity is not only tolerated, it is widely accepted as the gold standard.

While we cannot gear society in a different direction for the moment, we can structure our companies to take bosozity into account. If your company is like mine, you know you have very few A players, a bunch of B players and a truckload of F players.

Join me today on a crusade to grow talent at minimal cost. We badly need people with brains, but such endeavor must NOT impact our bottom line. Wall Street analysts do not check if your company has a lot of brain power, but they do check earnings.

Perspectives on grass

Despite what researchers Cheech and Chong have proposed in their late 70’s papers, the grass is never greener on the other side.

There is a delusional tendency among IT consultants to believe that their next gig will be much better than the one they are currently on. When asked to describe their current client/project, most consultants will expand on total lack of management, fuzzy work objectives, intense politics and psychotic CIOs. They will tell you about unbelievable events that took place in front of their eyes. Stories about enraged PMs knocking down white boards, stoned workers and even people going at it in meeting rooms.

When those same consultants are assigned to a new project, they go through a honeymoon phase that lasts a short time. They are relieved to exit their current nightmare, they end up at a bar on their last day to celebrate the end of their detention and the group has a good time joking about the unbelievable things that made their life soooo miserable for months. If you ask those consultants at that precise moment what’s their outlook on the next project, they will tend to be very optimistic. Dude, it can’t be that BAD again, this is impossible. Or I’m sure the next team is better managed, one of my friends has been there for a year.

Let’s say you cash your $900 annual bonus and you hop on a plane to Vegas. You go the Bellagio because you feel lucky. You play the roulette and you put $100 on red. The ball hits black and you lose. You re-do the same bet, putting again $100 on the same red square. Damn it, the ball also landed in the back zone. You repeat this pattern another 5 times, and the freaking ball always land on black. Your mind tells you that the ball has landed on black 7 times, so there are strong odds that it will land on red the next time, right? It ain’t so obviously, as the ball always has a 50% chance of hitting red, and it has no memory of where it got the previous times. Researchers call this the “casino bias”.

Consultants have a similar bias, they’ve hit a string of failed projects and their subconscious tells me the next one will be a winner. Difference is, the game is rigged. There are no great projects, the ball can never land on red. Why is that?

Great projects do exist but they are done by a very small team of smart and internal people. Projects that involve dozens and dozens of people are usually doomed to fail, the smart people know this so they exit these projects as fast as they can. So the client brings in contractors to do the job, it has really no choice and it will be willing to pay big bucks for someone to save his butt. Careers and egos are at stake, remember? When the payload of IT consultants land on the site and there’s a kick-off meeting, the project is already in a terminal phase so to speak. The ship is still horizontal but there’s a 40 feet gap in the hull. Start pumping and enjoy the ride.

Consultants then realize that this gig will be worse – much worse - than the previous one. They remember fondly the old team, how they wished they were still there if they hated the place a few weeks ago. They’ll even have lunch with colleagues that are still on the former project, inquiring about the latest local drama. Then the consultants will go through the cycle again, they accept their current fate and their hope is now on the next project which surely will be much better. Seniors know better and they just KNOW things won’t improve.

There is no green grass. Just a slab of cold concrete.

Dialing Mediocrity

Common sense, if there is such a thing, tells us that mediocrity is to be avoided at all cost and we shall pursue excellence in order to achieve our goals. This binary view of the world is obviously too simple and we need to understand the subtle shades of grey that define the world in which we live. To be able to understand those minor but important differences is key to a mature management style, one that does not condemn mediocrity per se.

We are humans and – whether we like or not – we sometimes achieve mediocre results despite our best intentions. How we manage mediocrity is up to us, and here what separates leaders from the rest of the pack.

French painter Monet once asked his sales agent to sit on a stool so that he could do a portrait of him. After a while, Monet would rip the canvas, unsatisfied with what he had accomplished. He would start again, handling the paintbrush in a different way perhaps, and then again after some time he would explode in rage, shredding the canvas to pieces. He could go on and on like until the end of the day, much to the discomfort of his sales agent. It was dark and then Monet would call it a day, with no paintings to be shown. He would strive for perfection, and anything less was meant to be destroyed.

Could Monet get a job at CGI? Of course not, the poor bastard would be filtered out by our HR minions. Psychological tests would clearly show that this guy could not last a single day at a typical government site. Monet might try to shred the imperfect client, something that is clearly verboten in our CPMF (Client Partnership Management Framework).

Mediocrity is everywhere, and once you accept it and understand it, the world suddenly becomes manageable. Mediocrity flourishes at our clients sites, it is also present within CGI and yet the world continues its course and we manage to post profits every quarter. Is it worth it to fight mediocrity? If mediocrity generates generous sales and revenues, what’s not to love about it?

I’m not saying mediocrity is the new mantra upon which we should build out future. What I’m saying is that mediocrity is so present that we should learn to benefit from it, rather that rejecting it at the cost of decreased sales. We do not have the luxury of ignoring mediocrity.

It takes a while to get used to this philosophy, but anyone who’ve worked long enough for a government client understands this pretty well. Coming to terms with mediocrity is an evolutionary process. You learn to enjoy mediocrity, it no longer gets on your nerves and drives you crazy. You laugh at mediocrity, which makes your day worthwhile and you have some great stories to tell to your wife / husband / parole agent. Mediocrity will clearly outlive you, so why worry then?

If the client wants you to create a 45-page PowerPoint deck full of irrelevant details, just do it. If the client wants you to host dozens of working sessions where everyone acts in childish manners with no objectives in sight, just do it and put on your best smile. It’s easy to do, the client will be happy, and CGI will be happy.

At the end of the day, that’s what counts.

Lowering your expectations for your own good

CGI Group was founded by 2 young guys who were 26 and 29, and now it’s the largest IT company in Canada. We’re like Apple and Google in a sense, except we’re not cool, we wear suits and people under 25 don’t know us - and if they do they think we’re specialized in “CGI-BIN” development.

Friends, the economy is tough nowadays and we will live through harsh times for several years. Don’t even think of taking risks and starting a company, nobody will give you a dime. Our fearless founder Serge was one of a kind, he’s much smarter than you and they’re no way you can even walk in his footsteps.

The reason I’m such a downer is that we badly need to hire people, and I get extremely angry when I hear that one smart employee leaves for a gaming company or Microsoft or any other company cooler than us. Why would you work for a company where you get free drinks and food, casual dress code and co-workers who look like Kramer or The Dude? At first, you’ll get all excited, the company will throw free t-shirts, golf hats and Hawaiian parties, but as the reality sinks in and you work 90 hours a week, you’ll realize you’re just a pawn in a giant chess game controlled by people who’ll never meet. Your contribution will be insignificant, the entertainment and freebies that your company provide will just a mask to hide the truth. And the single truth is, a company has to make money in order to survive.

Here at CGI we don’t do this double talk. What you see is literally what you get, it is the stark reality without a costly varnish of make-believe. Yes, our projects are boring. Yes, our customers are government offices frozen in time. Yes, our organization is made of dozens of middle management layers each with no power or budget. Yes, you’ll feel like a number from day one (and we’ll actually give you a number). Yes, you’ll work 37.5 hours a week (I mean 40). But that’s the beauty of it - we could not be more transparent.

So save yourself years of unfulfilled promises and unrealistic expectations. The whole notion of starting a company and changing the world is just an invitation to get your expectations crushed. Accept reality at face value and come work with us. You’ll never be a millionaire, you’ll end up at 65 pretty much like anyone else (bald, bitter and heavily in debt), your professional life will be pretty much uneventful, so dull actually that you’ll never talk about your job is social gatherings.

If you accept this reality as your wildest expectations, you will never be disappointed and you may actually feel pretty good. I’m awaiting your resume.