April 2009

Will there be an economic recovery? It's not clear. During March, the bears were saying that there is more bad news to come. The bulls are hoping that the signs of recovery experienced so far are a sign that things are getting better.

Both sides are probably right. The thing that history has taught us about deep structural shifts is that the precise nature of the changes is unpredictable. Innovative ways to address old dynamics are needed. Innovation means doing things in new ways. The interaction of these new ways is always unpredictable.

For WCI, it means that our old ways of finding business are no longer reliable. So we will start to spend much more time networking than we have ever done before, both on the Web and face to face. We have started a Linked In group called the Canadian Breakout and Turnaround Executives. It's is in its early days yet. But we remain committed to "doing" rather than just advising as a firm.

February 2009

Every one is settling into the reality that economic change across our society is not going to happen overnight. No big surprise for us at WCI. We have been dealing with reality of organizational turnaround and change for many years. That's complex enough. Doing it on a societal level makes it even more difficult. Succeeding at major change takes experience, smarts and guts. Thank goodness Obama is wise enough to supplement his own with a good set of advisors.

Have a look at Roelf Woldring's two papers on organizational turnaround for more if you are interested in what it takes at the organizational level.

"Enterprise Turnarounds: A Sustainable, Staged Approach"

"The Reality of Enterprise Turnarounds" - working draft of a white paper on the two roles crucial to successful turnarounds: turnaround leader and change sponsor.

January 2009

We have a new hope inspiring US President, general ego-centric foolishness in Canadian political life, and an North American economy that has been severely buffeted by greed, short term thinking, and lack of common business sense. The capacity of the leadership levels in financial institutions in both Canada and the United States is in severe doubt. Yet these same leaders talk as if they are the solution for the future. Many, many individuals who have lost half or more of the value of their retirement portfolios are not going to be inspired by the words or the presence of these individuals. Yet whole scale changes in the composition of these leadership groups is also not instantly advisable. It takes time to replace a whole generation of individuals. At least, they know what is currently the case, even if they are not capable of moving our societies beyond the current mess. Some mixture of the best of the old, and the competence of the new, will have to be found to move us beyond where we are.

These thoughts have also inspired me to think deeply about the future of this consulting firm. As a result, I have decided to search for more opportunities to do organizational turnarounds. My interim and general management experiences has always inspired me. Have a look at the new presentation of my resume (click here).

November 2008

In the fall of 2007, I read Albert and Hayes's "Power to the Edge", which looks at creating more flexible, more responsive military organizations. I built a power point deck which applied these "Edge organization ideas" to a major business transformation project in which one of our clients was engaged. This Power Point deck, suitably sanitized, is now available on the web site. Click here to see the PDF.

I think that many of these ideas have direct relevance to improving the delivery of Canada's health care services.