Our Principals
Osborne Group Principals are flexible, experienced executives who fill senior-level positions in any functional area on an interim or contract basis.
Osborne Insights BlogPrincipals of The Osborne Group recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of Krista Sweet, our Manager of Finance and Administration, service to our firm. Krista was the first employee that our founder, Don Wood, hired in 1993 and she has been with us ever since. Today she supports our clients and Principals in a myriad of ways. Pictured are (on the left) Jane Rounthwaite, President who will celebrate her 15th year with the Group this year, with Krista.
I grew up in a family that all loved literature. We all had our particular genre that we liked – mine was Canadian poetry. And my favourite was Leonard Cohen. In university, I had the opportunity to attend readings by some of the greats – Irving Layton and Al Purdy were excellent. And I also had the opportunity to see Leonard Cohen “in concert” – Leonard and his guitar on a riser in the gym. It was a combination of poetry reading and music (which was and still is poetry set to music).
Leonard Cohen certainly rose to fame and some fortune over the years, and for about 5 years became a recluse at a Buddhist colony. When he returned to civilization, he did very creative things which were not designed to be commercially successful, but I’m sure very fulfilling for an artist. During this time (the story goes), his business manager defrauded him of most of his money. So in 2008 at age 75, he went out on tour! But rather than just going out by himself, he surrounded himself with incredible musicians and background vocalists, and for the first time, included the recording and release of a DVD, Live in London, which met with much commercial success. While I didn’t see any of the live concerts, I would say from watching the DVD, that the tour was intense (as is fitting for Leonard) with small bits of humour interspersed.
Spurred on by the success (or more likely the fun) of the 2008 tour, Leonard is back on the road. I had the pleasure of seeing him perform in Toronto. This time each of the very talented musicians and singers had their turn in the spotlight, Leonard sang what the audience wanted to hear, interspersed self-deprecating humour, and he recited poetry (to a completely hushed audience of 15,000 I might add). He seemed much more relaxed and grateful to his fans for continuing to support him after all these years.
So what have I learned? Regardless of the motivation, it is possible to continue to re-invent yourself, stay true to yourself and enjoy your work. And perhaps the most important – surround yourself with great people!
Sheila Hamilton
For a variety of reasons, I’ve recently been pondering this question. The first question of course is “what is the definition of leadership?” I like Peter Drucker’s definition – “Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing right things.” But there are many other definitions, many of which include a laundry list of leadership traits.
One often overlooked characteristic of a good leader is strong self-awareness – the ability to know what you are good at, when you are being effective, when you are present emotionally, etc. Without this characteristic, the other traits such as power, charisma and vision can be taken to the extreme and become ineffective.
Sometimes a leader can get into a situation where they lose sight of how effective they are being as a leader. This can certainly happen when they are too close to the situation, or have a personal emotional engagement with it. For the good of the organization, it’s important for the leader to have someone to whom they can turn to help frame the situation more clearly for them. This can be a partner, a mentor or a coach.
Leadership, like many other skills, evolves over time. A self-aware leader who steps back from time to time and reflects on their effectiveness, and alters or tweaks behaviour and style, can inspire people and lead an organization to great achievements.
So often people shy away from delivering bad news or saying “no”. The reluctance to face this and communicate directly often causes more problems than delivering the news actually does. If someone has applied for a job, or delivered a proposal, or made a request of any sort, they are expecting to hear one way or the other about the decision. Uncertainty is far harder to live with than rejection.
When delivering the bad news, it’s important to provide some feedback. For example, if you have interviewed someone for a job and have selected another candidate, tell the person that “I’m sorry but we have selected another applicant. We had some very strong candidates to choose from, and we think you have very strong skills. We were particularly impressed with the insightful questions that you asked, but we selected someone who has more experience in our industry.” This provides helpful feedback for the candidate.
If you are not able to deliver a product or service to someone on time, don’t shy away from telling them. They may choose to buy that product or service from someone else, but more likely, they will determine how to accommodate the change in schedule. If they do choose to buy from someone else, follow up with them. They may still become a customer because they now know that you are honest and care about your customers. Who wouldn’t want to do business with that kind of company?
I have always been a big believer that vacation is extremely important. But I recently read about a research study out of Indiana University that gave this a new perspective.
Psychologist Lile Jia divided a few dozen undergraduate students into 2 groups and asked both to list as many modes of transportation as they could think of. He told one group of students that this task had been developed by students at Indiana, and the other a group of students in Greece. Surprisingly, there was a significant difference in the results from the two groups.
The group who thought the task originated in Greece came up with far more modes of transportation. Instead of just buses, trains and planes, they also came up with horses, spaceships, bicycles and Segway scooters. The conclusion that was drawn from these results was that the students felt less constrained by their local transportation options because the problem came from far away.
By intentionally getting away from work, we can actually free ourselves to think differently about our business. When we are “a million miles away” from work, we are more likely to see things more clearly.
I recently bought a new car. I decided that after having driven practical (and frankly boring) cars all my life, I would buy a car that’s as much a toy as it is a vehicle. There is one aspect of it that I was warned could be a bit “tricky”. So when I picked up the car, the trunk contained 2 boxes with various parts in them. I opened the boxes and could figure out what was in one of them, but the other baffled me, and of course contained no instructions. So I dutifully watched the DVD that came with the vehicle and these parts were never shown or mentioned – not helpful. I found some YouTube videos that again ignored the parts. Finally I found a user discussion group where someone actually explained what they were for – note this was a user, not the manufacturer.
I remember putting toys together for my children one year before Christmas. The one that Santa was giving to my son had very clear instructions – do step 1 then step 2 etc. The one for my daughter had instructions that were written in design language – “attach the flange to the housing”. What does that even mean?
It is so important to keep the user in mind when communicating, whether it’s how to assemble something or any other type of message. It’s no different than understanding your audience when preparing a presentation. The message, no matter how interesting or important, will be lost if it is not delivered in a way that is meaningful for the listener or reader.
I’ve had a number of conversations lately and read some articles and blogs bemoaning the apparent death of basic etiquette. It seems that there is nothing common about common courtesy. The lack of courtesy is not restricted by generation, gender or job description.
I’m not talking about road rage or cellphone use (don’t get me started on that one). I’m talking about basic business etiquette. If an individual takes the time to meet with someone from outside their organization whether it’s an interview, a sales call, a “brain picking” exercise, etc., a thank you email or card is in order no matter what the outcome of the discussion. Have we become so self-absorbed that we can’t take a minute or two to thank someone for sharing some of their time with us?
I’m in the process of having some dental work done. It’s the type of work that is usually done in teen-age years or younger, so I’m feeling rather old whenever I have to go in for an appointment. Today the staff were applauding my dental hygiene, and giving the poor 12 year old boy in the next chair a really rough time for his poor dental hygiene. I’m pretty sure when I was 12 that I didn’t care too much about looking after my teeth. It got me to thinking about this question – At what age do we finally understand the importance of taking care of such things as our teeth, our skin, etc? For me there wasn’t a triggering event, it just sort of happened that despite my parents trying to enforce good habits about everything, at some point I started to understand that they were right and it was up to me to do something about it.
And that led me to thinking about the parallels for business owners. It shouldn’t take a catastrophic event for founders to realize that they need to start running the business like a grown-up – putting in robust systems, adopting sound HR policies and practices, investing in marketing, etc. What is the wakeup call that is needed to transition an organization from “back of the envelope” to respectable management? It may just be a realization that it’s exhausting for the owner to have to be involved in everything, or a desire to sell the business one day. Hopefully it doesn’t take loss of a key customer or market share or something even worse to provide the impetus to run the organization more effectively.
One of the things that I like about being a contract executive is that it affords me the time to do some volunteering. I need to admit that I’m one of those people who have difficulty saying “no”, so sometimes I get myself overcommitted. Someone asked me why I do all the things that I do, and my answer is much like it is for being a regular blood donor – I have O negative blood, the universal donor, so I was given this gift and I have an obligation to use it to help others. I feel the same way about volunteering – I have skills and abilities, and there are organizations that need these abilities to do their good work.
Because there is such a need for volunteers, it is easy to get into something which is not enjoyable. I think finding the right volunteer opportunities is much like finding the right job. First and foremost, you need to believe in the work of the organization. Second, you need to understand yourself – what you enjoy and what you’re good at. Do you want to be part of the committee that organizes everything? Do you like to be behind the scenes preparing things? Or do you like to be on the front lines interacting with the recipients of the programs? If you don’t think through this carefully and choose correctly, then you will begrudge the time that you spend with the organization and likely won’t give it your best effort, so you won’t really be adding to the work of the organization. As one of my friends describes it, the time that you spend as a volunteer should be “life giving”.
I really like the thinking behind the requirement that all high school students in Ontario must spend 40 hours in community service. It’s important that we instil the practice of giving freely of their time to our youth. I know of many teens who have done something merely to get their required hours or to beef up their resume, but I hope that there are others who have had their eyes opened to this important part of making a difference to society.
