Tag Archives: Alberta

Cleaner, Greener, Safer, Friendlier.

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There wasn’t a smile in the room. No one dared make eye contact. We were sitting in a P&G sales meeting listening to why our market share had fallen to #2 versus Colgate. This had never happened before, and according to the wildly frustrated VP at the front of the room, there would be hell to pay if it were to ever happen again.

The brand team rolled out their new in-store displays, the account teams announced new discounting and the ad agency showed the new line of commercials … all proving that Crest did in fact make teeth brighter and whiter versus the competition. Then, out of no where, an irreverent kid in the back of the room raised his hand, stood up and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, but instead of discounting, why don’t we give away a small tube of toothpaste to a family in need for every tube our customers buy? Why don’t we connect our customers emotionally with our brand and forever differentiate ourselves from the competition?”

Silence. Complete silence followed … until the VP shook his head, continued on his rant and moved to the next slide in his “we must be better, faster, cheaper” powerpoint presentation.

Better, faster, cheaper has had its day. That day is over. Today’s companies need to stand for something larger than just the products they sell … something that defines purpose, communicates conviction and inspires a new generation of employees with a sense of meaning. Companies devoted to profit as well as larger missions are winning … winning RFPs, winning the battle for talent and winning the hearts and minds of consumers.

What is your differentiation? What is your mission? What is your conviction?

Ghandi called out for each of us to “be the change you want to see in the world” yet most of us live in a short-term, extraction-based mentality during the day (better, faster, cheaper) and only turn our attention to the quality of our communities and planet at night. What if each of our companies embraced a mission of being cleaner, greener, safer, friendlier? What if we woke up every morning inspired to go to work because we knew what we were doing made our homes, our communities, our cities, our surroundings a whole lot cleaner, greener, safer, friendlier?

People are in search for meaning. People want to be a part of something that makes a difference. People want to work for something that matters. I’m sorry but better, faster, cheaper just doesn’t turn people on, it doesn’t make better communities … and it just isn’t going to change our world.

What if every company in Edmonton had the mission and the conviction to make every day a little bit cleaner, greener, safer, friendlier? What would happen to our brand if the world knew every company in Edmonton was working to make things a bit cleaner, greener, safer, friendlier? What if we embedded a larger purpose into our business models and established a bit of humanity alongside the products and services we sell?

Sorry for raising my hand. I’ll sit back down now. You can continue with the same powerpoint presentation as last year.

Governance in the Public Service

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I’m feeling disheartened and concerned tonight.

Over the past decade, we have pushed and voted for accountability, transparency and good governance.  We’ve embraced the Neil McCrank Report on Boards, Agencies and Commissions, and legislated a Governance Secretariat.   We have moved to a world of Results-Based Budgeting and have graduated numerous elected officials and public servants with ICD.D (Institute of Corporate Directors) designations.

So much progress and ambition … to build a better Alberta.

Yet tonight, I have learned that the Alberta Health Services (AHS) Board stood by their conviction that certain bonuses were deserved by public officials, and now risk termination because they defied the demands of the Minister of Health.  The Minister stated that “We cannot and will not accept AHS’s decision.  It is completely out of steps with the times” and “we will ensure … they live within their means.”

This is where I’m challenged.

I watch the unplanned budget cuts to the health and education system like the rest of you.  I struggle reading Cam Tait’s articles on PDD.  I have friends whose jobs have been eliminated.  And I’m starting to feel this isn’t my Alberta anymore.

But … we put these Boards, Agencies and Commissions in place to steward these complex organizations on behalf of government.  We do so to de-politicize the decision making, and to increase accountability to us, the taxpayers.  We appoint good people, citizens of Alberta, to do five main things: (1) Hire the CEO and hold him/her accountable for performance; (2) Shape the strategic plan that delivers on the expectation of the Shareholder; (3) Approve the business plan and operating budget; (4) Assess and ensure organizational risks are adequately managed; and (5) Ensure the policies are in place to prevent risk, fraud or mismanagement.

By in large, these boards do a great job – AIMCo, ATB, AFSC, AGLC, AITF, ERCB, UofA, UofC and all the other acronyms.  So when the Minister … any Minister … decides to undermine these Boards and declare that they will make the decisions on budgets, programs or staffing, the whole concept of governance gets thrown out the window.  When such occurs, there is no longer a role for an independent Board, and the organization is nothing more than a department of the Ministry.

And I’m not just being hard on the government in power.

When the leader of the opposition states that “The Minister has to assert his authority and he has two ways to do it … he can issue a clear directive telling the Board to rescind the bonuses, or he has to fire the Board” she is equally as wrong, as both these options are also blatant political interferences.

Recent assault on Boards, Agencies and Commissions comes (1) When the government is not clear on their expectations for performance prior to budget approval; (2) When they use the budget as the tool to imply policy; or (3) When they change the rules mid-course.  Whatever the case, if Alberta is going to mature into a beacon of good governance, then we need to shift the blame away from Director education … and toward clearly articulated Shareholder expectation.

Cash Cows in FunkyTown

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“Talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it … FunkyTown.”

It was 1980.  Disco was mainstream.  John Travolta was had just released Saturday Night Fever, and a band called Lipps released this catchy tune that hit #1 on the Billboard Top 100.  Alberta was a boomtown.  People were flocking to the province, as the price of oil had risen to $37 from $3 a decade earlier.  Life was grand, and nothing could stop us.

FunkyTown was a wild success.  Fans couldn’t get enough of it, and Lipps raked in the money from royalty sales that was then spent on concert after concert where people came to hear that one song … FunkyTown.  Unfortunately, the cash and the glamour was all consuming, and Lipps never really made it back in the recording studio to make another hit.  They tried … kind of … but they had to keep feeding the FunkyTown cash cow, and eventually after five years they packed it in … and now will forever be known as a one-hit wonder.  Sad.

Cash cows are both wonderful and dangerous things.  Microsoft is a great example.  At first they generate extraordinary profits and everyone is feeling funky and can do no wrong.  Profits are used to fund experiments in other areas – but those experiments are unfortunately just that … experiments … that are started then stopped, funded then under-funded, prioritized and then deprioritized.  You see, cash cows often produce wasted efforts across organizations, as they fund experimental opportunities for diversification but as soon as the cash cow hiccups, everything is shut down and all the resources come running back to protect the beloved bovine.  Diversification never happens, and cash cows often end up being one-hit wonders.

In Alberta, we suffer from our own cash cow system, our own one-hit wonder, our own FunkyTown.  We use our cash cow to create one of the finest universities in the world.  We seek out the best and the brightest talent and encourage them to come here to create opportunities for diversification – in areas like medical devices, heart transplants, nanotechnology, engineering, cardiovascular diseases, metabolomics, virology and islet cell transplants.  And just as they are hitting their stride … just as they are moving toward commercialization … what do we do?  We see our cash cow hiccup, we shorten our breath and immediately cut budgets to the very things that could bring us our second hit song, leaving the best and the brightest in our recording studios feeling like they are nothing more than an experiment.  Sad … once again.

The winning formula for attracting investment and people to Alberta is to create a stable environment for greatness to occur.  We need to understand that our cash cow is a blessing if we are smart, and a curse if we are complacent or inconsistent.  We have a winning formula for producing second, third and fourth hit songs … but it requires commitment and dedication to the investment; a stable environment for musicians to generate hits.

So let’s stop “talking about, talking about, talking about, talking about, talking about” disrupting the winning formula we are creating … and let’s commit ourselves to establishing a stable environment that generates multiple-hit wonders.

Commercialization Redefined

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It’s convocation season … that spring season when the University of Alberta commercializes 9300 new products into the Edmonton market … all of which walk across the stage on two legs.  Our new medical students can save more lives.  Our new engineering students can build better bridges.  And our business students can start new companies.

Everyone is excited about the possibilities … except … there is a quiet hush and whisper that surrounds the liberal arts graduates.  Engineers become engineers.  Teachers become teachers.  Nurses become nurses.  But arts grads … what do they become?  This is the question that stumps many of our elected officials, who are quickly swinging the education pendulum away from “intellectual exploration” and rapidly towards “technical training” such that our youth can immediately become … as we say in economics … factors of production.

So for the public policy pundits, whose vision for Alberta is to be the industrial engine of Canada and the Banana Republic of North America, I offer the following perspective for consideration:

  • Not all liberal arts graduates work as baristas at Starbucks.  This fact disappoints many who love to point to the liberal arts graduate as the poster child for unemployment … but it is far from the truth.  You see, only some liberal arts graduates work at Starbucks, and thank God they do … because someone has to be responsible for weaving human psychology, anthropology, addiction and economics into a $50 billion empire built on $5.00 non-fat lattes.
  • Not all graduates with history degrees are unemployed.  Some are.  Some probably should be.  But some make a lot of money understanding that societal unrest in Chile affects the price of copper, and thus the price of electricity and the price of houses … and they tend to make terrific long term investors.  History grads also tend to understand that markets are driven by world events, and world events are driven by markets … making events like the Arab Spring – Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain – highly predictable.
  • Not all political science programs are the same, contrary to what some people might think.  But what all programs teach in common is that empires always overreach and they always overspend … and that politicians will always come up with ways to create more money while finding creative ways to avoid discipline.  Political history shows that debt ceilings and quantitative easings are often a band-aid solution to a slightly larger problem called fiscal hemorrhaging.
  • Not all fine arts students are street performers.  Some work at Apple Computer … because a guy named Steve Jobs believed that technology needs to be married with the humanities, and human beings need to interact with technology in ways that bring both joy and productivity.  Not sure if Apple will remain as the most valuable company in the world, but I have a feeling it has forever changed the way the world sees industrial design.

The case for liberal arts education needs to be reframed.  Not only is there economic return as shown through these cheeky examples, but there is massive societal return given that the root causes of our global challenges are often grounded in human behaviour … and the understanding of how people live, think, co-exist, network and interact … and frankly I’m not imagining a world where adding more engineers will help us answer the most important questions that seem to all start with the word … why?

The public policy pendulum across the country is swinging, and I am gravely concerned with the narrow direction we are taking around technical training at the expense of intellectual exploration.  It is not one or the other.  We need both.  We need the technically trained, but not at the expense of our need for interdisciplinary, liberal arts graduates to help us shift from an industrial powerhouse to an intellectually curious city that embraces creativity, entrepreneurism, thought-leadership and democratic freedom.

Great cities, provinces and countries have great universities … and our University of Alberta must continue to commercialize liberal arts students as part of the portfolio of youth that will help make us remarkable.