We know Ontario’s family doctors are highly intelligent, caring practitioners.  They study for years to gain the knowledge and expertise that allow us to put our lives trustfully into their hands when we get sick.

By the same token, the CEOs of our largest corporations are knowledgeable, skilled business people, entrusted with public and private funds to run complex organizations that keep our economy and our lives running smoothly and (in most cases) profitably.

Would you ask your Bank President to diagnose your health issues?  Of course not. 

But with recent initiatives in primary health care, what we are asking doctors in Ontario (and other provinces) to do is to govern and manage large organizations to deliver programs and services in a new model of primary health care delivery. 

Doctors don’t get business training when they go to medical school.  They don’t get training in governance, human resource management, or finance.  Yet they are being expected to preside over Family Health Teams, to establish collaborative health care practices, to hire, supervise and fire employees, to meet legislative and regulatory requirements for corporations, and to undertake and manage performance monitoring and measurement. 

If these new initiatives in inter-professional, collaborative primary health care are going to succeed, the Ministry needs to assess and invest in the infrastructure, systems, training and support that physicians need. 

Melodie Zarzeczny

Energy. All Canadian organizations use energy for product production or services and/or infrastructure to provide heat, light, air-conditioning for staff and electricity to run equipment (computers, etc.). For many organizations, energy is the largest single expense aside from salaries. But do we proactively manage this resource or do we simply consume and treat it as an uncontrollable cost of doing business? Without taking a close look at optimizing cost and the impact to our firms we do a large disservice to owners and our stakeholders. Historically we have not stewarded energy well. Ontario and Canada for that matter has had low cost and plentiful electrical energy for many years. That has all changed. The Ontario government is now valuing electrical energy differently, presumably to ensure consumers pay for the real cost of this commodity. If you haven’t developed a mitigation strategy get going! If you do, not only will you protect your operating margin but you will contribute long term sustainability for your firm!  

David Rankin

There are two kinds of people in the world – Clumpers and Splitters.  Clumpers are people who look at things – systems, processes, movies, or furniture – and see similarities.  Splitters look at those same things and see the differences.

I don’t know how you become a Clumper or a Splitter – genetic predisposition or life experience - but in my experience everybody has a tendency to be more one than the other. 

Why is this relevant?  Well, when I look at implementing changes in an organization, it’s important to be a Clumper early on, and then act like a Splitter in the later stages.

When you are looking at business requirements, if you view each user location or set of stakeholders as having different unique businesses and requirements (i.e., splitting), you can become overwhelmed by the diversity of needs.  If, however, you look for the commonalities (i.e., clumping), you can find the common denominators across the system users and implement a solution that meets the bulk of the needs across the organization. 

Then, in subsequent phases, you can think like a Splitter and look at the differences required to handle different customer needs, or geographic regions, etc., and  assess the value of those differences to your business and decide how to handle them – add enhancements to the system, change the business process or even decide to not address them at all. It becomes a business decision that ties to your overall business objectives (see Christy’s Rule #2 – tie your changes to business goals).

Christy DeMont

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.

Sheila Hamilton

Would governments be as despised by their citizens if they actually helped their citizens and tried to meet or exceed their expectations? Instead of continually cutting services (and while I certainly don’t mind eliminating the gravy) it may be more appropriate and required to find ways to increase the revenue and improve the cash flow. We are starting to see cities and municipalities who are running out of cash declaring bankruptcy. You just can’t keep running on debt -- you need to increase the cash flow to meet the required expenses.

How do you get business growth in today’s turbulent times?  With any successful organization it starts with engaged employees who strive each and every day to meet or exceed their clients / customer expectations. These employees create a positive environment for the customers creating a clientele that is more likely to return and purchase more services or product. These same engaged employees will work to meet all corporate objectives and deliver improved results because they clearly understand what is expected of them and the benefits of delivering superior results. 

Procter and Gamble, West Jet, Apple all get it. Success is delivered through their employees and plenty of leadership time is focused on empowering these employees to improve results and create a positive consumer experience generating ever increasing cash flow.  What are your thoughts on the importance of employees with respect to business growth?

 Let me know at @mdick54

Mike Dick

How do you get business growth in today’s turbulent times?  Is the business world capable of managing the tide of social change that is beginning to take hold of the global agenda?

Many governments are losing control and several countries in Europe and the Middle East are in turmoil as they struggle to meet the demands of a more engaged population that are not accepting the status quo or reluctant to make the necessary changes required to offset the collapse of their respective economies.

Even within North America “Occupy Wall Street” is starting to show the large distrust that exists between the vocal representatives of the 99% and big corporations. Given this growing unrest what should business, organizations and yes even governments do to make sure they survive and change to deal with the social and vocal upheaval that is taking place throughout the world.

I firmly believe that for any organization to succeed it boils down to three fundamental areas of focus that leaders must ensure are embedded in their organizational culture. Cash flow management, employee engagement and client/customer satisfaction. West Jet gets it -- Air Canada doesn’t.  Apple gets it -- RIM doesn’t. Where would you start within your organization?

Let me know at @mdick54

Mike Dick

While we provide solutions that drive success in business, IT doesn’t directly make money for the company – so while what we do is business critical, we are still primarily in the business of providing service to other functions.

So what happens when something goes wrong?

There are two possible responses to a customer service problem.  The first response is, “This is unacceptable. This must be resolved immediately”.  The second response is, “It’s a problem, but it’s not a big deal. We can figure out a work-around until it gets fixed”.

Now here’s where the light bulb goes on:  if you are providing service to a customer, and a problem comes up, you get to pick your response first.  The 100% always true no fail guarantee is that whichever response you pick, your customer will pick the other one.

The cool thing is that it doesn’t matter if it’s a broken cellphone or a million dollar piece of software - it still works this way. (It also works the same way if your restaurant meal isn’t satisfactory or you are trying to return something to a store or somebody messed up your tee time – try it and see!)

And when people in your organization see how seriously you take the fact that their blackberry isn’t working properly, they will understand that you also take their big problems seriously, and the next time you have a significant issue you will have their support. It’s amazing how much support you can get from your business colleagues by sending somebody out to the store to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a phone.

Christy DeMont