Osborne Insights Blog

Board Operations Improvement and Renewal – Good Governance Basics!

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:59:00 GMT

Are you concerned about the lack of strong leadership and value demonstrated in the boardroom? Are you frustrated with under-utilized expertise sitting at the boardroom table? What about the low level of engagement and poor attendance demonstrated at meetings? You are not alone. Many boards both public and private sector are plagued with problems like these. They are all leading indicators of poor board structure, strategic plan alignment and poor operating discipline which, with a little time and organizational effort on behalf of the Board Chair and CEO or Executive Director, can be fixed easily! In a few short months your organization could reap the benefits of a supportive, strategic and engaged Board of Directors or Trustees!

Restructuring seems like a large endeavour but broken down into key activities like a current board assessment, reviews of the composition and a number of committees, the committee terms of reference and finally, strategic plan alignment, will produce a plan to align the organization’s mission and board objectives! This type of transformation will satisfy the strategic needs of the board, owners and management of your organization. Engagement, quality of board room discussion, strategic action and finally attendance will all improve. Recently a provincially funded Higher Education institution realized that its Board was not providing the type of value that it could. Though large in numbers in both membership and committees, the board suffered poor attendance and board member engagement. Agenda scope creep, member conflict and low productivity haunted the President and Board Chair to the point that hiring a governance consultant became a necessity before it became too late. Post review and restructuring work and with a dramatic reduction in numbers (both committee and members) a transformation of the board is now underway. One that is more aligned, engaged and contributing value to the school!

So back to you…If you see the same symptoms mentioned above, the first and most important step is to acquire an independent faciliator to start the review process! Engage your Governance committee with a challenge to renew the Board structure.

Energy Management for small business owners in Ontario…How does one optimize it to improve profitability?

How does a small business owner utilize the provincial government incentives to conserve, time shift and perhaps even generate energy in the Province of Ontario? Well apparently it’s all here for you! Wind, solar, and even small hydro opportunities are all out there for consumers to consider for offset their electrical demand. Or so that’s how the Ontario Government (Ontario Power Authority) has presented the options to small and medium sized industrial users. I think we all understand however that it’s not exactly that straight forward and one really needs to start with the fundamentals and assess their demand in context of their individual business operations. But what questions do we to ask before we consider implementing changes? For one you need to know your demand profile - is my electrical demand continuous and not interruptible? Is there a energy conservation plan that can be applied to offset my peak high cost periods? Are there energy conversion options (multi fuel) to reduce the type of energy consumption at different periods? Can I load shift to change the pattern of use and save money? Understanding your business energy demand picture is the very first step towards improving costs and taking advantage of the incentives offered by your local utility.

Here in Ontario the Ontario Power Authority does do a few things right though. The Authority website is a great resource to users to investigate savings opportunities. Start with its home page and scroll through all the different programs available for consumers. Next check out the Hydro One website and review their programs. Some of the programs include:

FiT and Micro FiT
ICI OPA Industrial Accelerator Program for grid connected Users
Ontario Clean Energy Benefit offered by Hydro One-One
OPA/Hydro One Audit program incentives

Many owners think electrical demand costs cannot be optimized and that these programs really don’t fit their needs. Not only is that incorrect but many businesses, maybe some of your competitors have taken advantage of the incentives to improve their energy demand and costs. Now that’s something we need to pay attention to!

David Rankin

Osborne Group Welcomes New Principal - Teri Brown

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:30:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce that Teri Brown has joined The Osborne Group as a Principal. She has extensive experience with strategic thinking and implementation, change management and communications in the private, public and not-for profit sectors.

Nobody Trains to be a Follower

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:41:00 GMT

I recently spotted this on a tee shirt in the gym on a young man working with a trainer. My first thought was this is the type of “rah rah” slogan used by many sales and marketing sessions to “pump up” a team or a group of would be team leaders.

After some thought, however, I began to develop a concern that it was, perhaps, designed to build up leaders as the expense of denigrating “followers”, which began to beg the question “can leaders exist without followers?”

In a recent discussion with several like-minded people we spent some time discussing the concept of Leaders, Followers and Frankies (after the Frank of “I did it my way” fame). I will leave the discussion of Frankies for another time. We had no real trouble discussing leaders and the various qualities of leadership.

We explored leadership in the context of “great leaders” and determined that for the most part great leaders fell into two categories;

people who were in the right place at the right time and accomplished great things; and
people who over a period of time generated a following of people who “believed” in the statements, tenets or beliefs of the leader.

We also concluded that for the most part leaders come and go, have their time in the sun and are replaced by others.

The conclusion is that without followers, leaders cannot exist. Leaders must find and inspire followers in order to achieve greatness in leadership and like all leaders, followers will come and go with the leaders.

At most times in our lives we are both leaders and followers.

John Gundy

What Do New Jets Really Cost?

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:10:00 GMT

Hearing about the variety of opinions about the cost of fighter jets for the Canadian Armed Forces, it got me thinking about the idea of using Total Cost of Ownership as a method for calculating the costs of a solution to an organization and comparing options. (I’m not going to address the topic of defining your needs and identifying solutions that meet those needs – which seems to be at issue here as well. Perhaps another blog on this soon…)

Before the idea of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) became popular, businesses putting in new computer solutions didn’t understand and account for the full cost of the solution – it used to be (and still is) easy to think of the cost of a piece of technology as the amount you pay a software vendor for acquiring the product, implementing it and paying annual maintenance. These costs are clear and unambiguous, particularly when you are writing the cheques for them.

What traditionally didn’t get accounted for was a myriad of less obvious costs – the cost of your internal IT team to learn, implement and manage the new system, the costs to train and support staff who use the product, and of course additional infrastructure costs such as backup and archive, computer room footprint, power, AC and UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) draw. Some of these costs are fairly obscure to determine (and in fact for things like infrastructure really have to have some sort of cost allocation used).

But here’s the thing: if you don’t consider them, one day you realize that your computer room is full to capacity, or your network is working at maximum capacity or you need more storage at your hosted computer facility, and you have to make a case for why you suddenly need to spend more money. What’s worse, it’s often on items that nobody really cares about (“No new added functionality? Why should we pay for a new UPS?”) and that fall into categories that, as a CIO, your boss expects you to be on top of – so not only do you need to ask for money, you look like you aren’t doing your job.

So – back to the F-35 jets. What costs should be included? First, you want to include any cost that is incremental over what you have today. You have the cost of the planes, of course. And direct ongoing costs – maintenance, training for pilots and ground crew. You have to consider some operating costs – for example, if these planes use fuel at a faster rate that the old ones, you have to add in the extra fuel. If you need to rebuild hangars or runways to accommodate them, you have to account for that. However, if the total number of pilots doesn’t change (i.e., they are just going to stop flying old planes and start flying the new ones), you don’t have to account for them.

My opinion is that you have to be thoughtful but use common sense. What’s really important here is to be able to compare options on equal footing (so accounting for all the costs for each option to provide a fully implemented solution), and then once you make the decision of the solution to be implemented, make sure you know the resources you need to implement and run the solution – money, people’s time or use of organizational facilities. Oh yeah – and, as always, make sure your colleagues understand your decisions and your analysis so they aren’t surprised down the line. Forgetting to do that is the surest way to have support for your project disappear if suddenly the price goes from $9 billion to $16 billion.

Christy DeMont

What Information Do I Need to Provide?

Wed, 09 May 2012 19:31:00 GMT

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.

Sheila Hamilton

Sustaining Conversion to Sustainable Energy Sources

Tue, 08 May 2012 16:04:00 GMT

We all support substituting sustainable electricity sources for fossil fired fuel power plants. It makes sense for our children’s future. We chew the air in the GTA, you cannot really breathe it.

A recent article in the Globe & Mail (Gwyn Morgan, April 30^th, admittedly an energy patch guy) cites the numerous, expensive government policy initiatives in Europe and North America which have been scaled back or dropped due to ineffective results. Note this is about results, not the substitution notion. Whether in Spain or Germany, the USA or Ontario; grants, feed-in-tariffs, local content rules and other subsidies all have failed as yet to significantly drive more sustained rates of substitution, more permanent jobs and almost certainly ensured higher costs of electricity for both residential and business users.

Did governments try too hard to drive jobs as well as get their green merit badge, all at the same time, only to distort an important technology shift and perhaps in fact slow the uptake in sustainable electricity resources? If we’re to convert to electrically powered vehicles to drastically reduce dependence on the internal combustion engine (and get back to breathable air) the price of electricity has to make that conversion feasible. We are market driven animals after all. And we still demand the conversion to sustainable energy sources in North America and abroad. It can be done with intelligent government policy not bandwagon thinking in developed and developing jurisdictions. As it’s a long term conversion project, the policies and programs have to make sense through periods of both economic adversity and prosperity in order to allow continuity of planning. Not easy but doable.

John Bielby

Is it Time for a Change at your Hydro Utility??

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:49:00 GMT

I recently received my Hydro One quarterly billing with a billing stuffer headlined “Is it time for a change”. There is an offer of a furnace incentive of $250 etc. to replace my existing GAS furnace which will cost about $6000 and will include an electrically efficient ECM fan motor.

I suggest that it is time for a change at your utility to make a meaningful electric conservation offer. Here are 3 examples;

Retrofitting ALL forced air furnaces with an ECM electric motor will cost the homeowner about $600 not $6000 - and will reduce the furnaces electricity consumption by some 200%. If the homeowner leaves the circulating fan on, the savings are about doubled.
Replacing ALL old refrigerators pre 1995 with 20 cu ft Energy Star models at a cost of about $600 will reduce electrical consumption by over 400%.
For the some 600k, mostly rural Ontario homeowners, with electric baseboard heat from the Ontario Hydro era, add a ductless, – 20C, air source heat pump for about $3500 to $4000 to reduce the homeowners electrical heating consumption by a half or more .

If the utility up-fronted the capital costs, the home owner can repay the capital cost on their hydro bill from a portion of the savings. The utility, through the OEB process, can make its business good by a distribution rate increase based on the net conservation savings. Home owners save, the utility saves, OPG saves and the spiral of rate increases might slow.

We are overdue for a change at Ontario utilities – Get serious about Conservation!

Bob Fisher

The Trouble with RFPs (Part 2)

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:09:00 GMT

In the brave new world of RFPs, the first meaningful dialogue between the client and a prospective consultant happens at the interview stage. Unfortunately, many of the RFP processes make this optional which is, in my opinion, the other major trouble with RFPs. And when there is an interview, it is usually structured which robs the client of a chance to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the consultant.

Developing an effective working relationship between a consultant and their client is about more than deliverables – it’s about fit. And the depersonalization of the procurement process makes it harder and harder on both sides to assess the quality of the fit. For example, can I as a consultant understand the frustration of my prospective client with a challenging management issue by reading a document that is posted for public consumption ? Where in this process does the client get to express their reservations about a particular situation to assess whether the consultant can or will respond is a way that aligns with the culture of the organization?

By making relationship building secondary to describing deliverables and setting out work plans before the individuals involved have even met, the RFP process makes it harder for all of us – consultants and clients – to do our very best work together.

Jane Rounthwaite

Is My Time More Valuable than Yours?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:37:00 GMT

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?

Sheila Hamilton

The Trouble With RFPs (Part 1)

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:51:00 GMT

In the last few years, we have all witnessed the rise of the RFP as the often proscribed but not necessarily preferred method through which prospective clients select their consultants. While no one in this business would argue about the need for accountability, especially when the funds being used to hire consultants are provided by the taxpayers, the RFP process seems to have robbed both the clients and the vendors of the opportunity for meaningful dialogue during the “dating” stage of procurement.

In a typical RFP process in the last few years, the prospective client is often on their own to develop the RFP. In order not to contaminate the objectivity of the bidding process, they cannot enter into discussion with a consultant who knows their organization to help them figure out exactly what they want to accomplish and what the best way to achieve it. Thus, the insights and knowledge gained by the consultant in previous work with that organization is lost to the client during the RFP development stage.

As the entire bidding process is built around the calibre of the RFP, the loss of exploratory dialogue means that all the respondents assume that the RFP is an accurate description of what the client really needs and wants. And in some organizations, which are large enough to have a lot of experience in writing RFPs such as the provincial government, this may be the case. However, in many smaller community-based organizations operating with limited senior staff resources, the calibre of the RFP may not be what it needs to be to solicit the responses they are hoping for and the help they really need.

Jane Rounthwaite

Osborne Group Welcomes New Principal

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:49:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce that John Gundy has joined The Osborne Group as a Principal. He has extensive hands-on experience with business growth, problem solving and change management in financial services companies, and small and medium businesses across many sectors.

Scientific Research & Experimental Development Program (SR &ED), going, going…..

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:47:00 GMT

This major innovation support program for small and medium (SME) businesses, appears to be on a soon-to-be-gone watch. In fact, the CRA agency which administers it has been cutting its pay-outs with vigour since 2010. While the new( in 2011) Director General, Susan Betts, has stated that it’s being tightened up, in fact the intent is clearly to reduce the cost of the program and especially target overly ambitious support submissions from which an industry of consultants has taken significant income in the past. Clearly the notion that 20 -30 % of the payout sums would end up in the hands of the consultants who help companies access the program by preparing the lengthy submissions is a flaw in the use of these funds.

Yet some of the recent recommendations of the Jenkins Report dealing with revising the overall federal approach to innovation support should be of concern. For example, a centralized funding agency to direct the government spending for innovation, essentially picking winners and losers, or worse, being politically influenced is worrisome.

Another recommendation, to link government procurement with supporting innovation, while sounding wholesome, has the potential to have procurement of items in government spending based upon degrees of innovation claimed rather the value for each dollar spent. Yet the notion of assisting high-growth, innovation firms access risk capital in later stages of early growth where there are gaps now, could be of real benefit.

It’s a difficult path to chose from for the federal government and the Minister for State for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear has indicted that it will be chosen before 2012 is over. Let’s trust there will still be some realistic program left for companies responsibly accessing SR & ED now, even if they aren’t the next RIM.

John Bielby

Earth Rising

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:29:00 GMT

“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside is available…a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose.” -Sir Frederick Hoyle, 1948

One of the most beautiful photos I have ever
seen is a picture of the earth rising over the
horizon of the moon. It looks blue, warm and
safe, particularly juxtaposed against the bleak
surface of the moon in the foreground and the
black emptiness surrounding it.

According to my Globe this weekend, this little
planet we inhabit is meandering through the
galaxy at about 1,332,000 kilometers an hour.
It sure doesn’t feel like we’re going that fast.
I guess it’s a good thing that we have that
atmosphere surrounding us like we’re driving
through space in a convertible with the top up.

(Much as I love convertible, I for one am glad we have that top up – I can’t imagine what a mess my hair would be if it were being blown around at that speed.)

I’m just saying that we need to protect this little ball we are riding around on so that it stays warm, safe and blue. We need to recognize that we all share the same land and sea and air and ruining it for anyone ruins it for everyone. And finally that when someone cuts you off in traffic or jumps into line ahead of you or doesn’t do what you ask them to do, give yourself some perspective by remembering the little blue ball in the middle of the big black emptiness.

Christy DeMont

Setting a Standard for Quality

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:25:00 GMT

Giuseppe Quintarelli, died on Sunday. He was 84 years old at the time
of his death, and he died at home in Negrar, in the Veneto region in
northeastern Italy.

Guiseppe Quintarelli was a winemaker. He
made glorious wines, rich, complex wines
infused with the sense of where they were
made.

Bepi, as he was known, followed his father
and grandfather into the winemaking
business. He started in the family business
in the 1950s and was still making wine in
the early 21^st century. He respected and
adhered to traditional techniques for making
wine and but also experimented with new
techniques to try to improve the quality and
consistency of the wine that came out of his
vineyards.

His interest in quality didn’t stop at the wine
making – he also used high quality corks,
bottles and labels. The labels on his wine
bottles are hand written and have his
signature on each one.

So the point of all this is that here was a man who spent his life focused on making the best wines he could, paying attention to the big things as well as the small things that made a difference. He tried new things but also respected the traditions of his industry. He understood that quality comes from skill and patience, seeing the big picture as well as the details. Good lessons for us all.

For the record, I had a bottle of his wine back in the fall – and it was everything it was promised to be. Maybe the best bottle of wine I’ve ever had. So if you come across one on a wine list somewhere, and you don’t mind dropping a couple of hundred bucks on it, order it up and think about Bepi and what quality means.

Christy DeMont

Christy’s Laws of Information Technology Leadership Law #4- Ask Questions

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:50:00 GMT

The theory is that there are no stupid questions. Okay, this is not quite true – but more on this later. First, a story.

I had a client a few years ago who was nervous about an interview I was about to do with a difficult business user in the early stages of a project. He asked for my list of questions for the interview in advance. I gave him my list:

“How does your department contribute to the success of the organization?”

“What works well and what areas/products/projects could be improved?”

“What do you need this [new computer system] to do to help you achieve your mandate?”

“What are the risks that I need to consider as we plan for and implement this [new computer system]?”

My client seemed unimpressed with my list and unsure that we would actually need the 2 hours we had booked for this conversation. Of course (because this is my blog entry, not yours), we had a great meeting, garnered the support of the previously difficult business user, and after the meeting, my client told me that he couldn’t believe that we had such a great meeting when I went in with a simple list of 4 questions.

As you can imagine, I actually asked many more questions than just the 4 listed, but all as part of a dialogue. The four questions keep the focus on key meeting outcomes and serve to get the conversation started.

Whether you are collecting business requirements, learning about a vendor proposal, or managing a staff member, asking open-ended, neutral questions is the key. And there’s nothing wrong with asking really basic questions (“why do you do that?”) that drive the discussion back to the first principles – i.e., what are we trying to accomplish with this project/department/product - that can get lost in the urgency of day-to-day operations.

And as for the no stupid questions theory, rest assured that there are entirely stupid questions – questions that demonstrate that you haven’t been listening, or don’t care about the answer you just got, or trick questions that get asked because somebody has a hidden agenda. But those are for a different blog entry.

Christy DeMont