Category: CEO & Boards

How do you know if your consultant’s proposal is reasonable?

July 1, 2019

In the tech world today, there are many senior executives who have had successful careers and as a transition into retirement offer their services as a consultant or advisor. Many have a wealth of experience and wisdom to share, but many are also learning the craft of consulting as they go. A few weeks ago, ...

Managing Performance

June 10, 2019

About a decade ago, the Toronto based company Rypple (acquired by Salesforce in 2012) popped onto the tech scene and made a lot of noise with their very loud marketing strategy that claimed Employee Performance Management systems are broken. Their argument was that current performance management systems and processes as practiced in most companies don’t ...

Diversity and work-life balance

June 2, 2019

Most companies aspire and strive to become a high-performance company and believe high-performance leaders are needed to drive a high-performance culture, but what does that mean? Growing up through my career during the eighties, nineties and into the new millennium, it was commonly accepted that for someone to become a senior leader, it meant long ...

When hiring, do you do your own reference checks? You should!

July 17, 2018

I continually meet with leaders who have hired an employee, only to terminate them within months of recruiting them. When I ask why, they reveal that they were surprised by a behaviour or absence of a critical skill set that didn’t surface during the interview process. When I ask whether they personally did reference checks, ...

Bad Candidate Experiences: How companies are losing the Talent War

June 3, 2018

A few months ago, I met with a former intern who had impressed me in the past. He had since graduated and become a successful junior software sales person. After a couple of years in his first sales role, he had decided to leave his current employer and find a more challenging sales position. I ...

Terminating an employee

I appreciate all the positive feedback that I received on my post Seven Lessons for New Leaders, so I thought I would stick with the theme for a new article. One of the most daunting tasks for a new manager is the decision to terminate an employee. Not only is it filled with emotion, this decision ...

Systemic Biases

June 1, 2018

This post may get a little controversial. I recently re-published a post that I wrote in 2011 discussing the career benefits of being an early riser and starting your business day at 7am. (6:30 is the new 7am!) Generally, I received positive comments on the post, but a couple of comments pushed me back on ...

6:30 is the new 7am!

December 6, 2017

I recently re-read a blog that I published from 2011 entitled “7am”. The essence of the post is that developing a discipline of starting your work day at 7am will affect the positive trajectory of your career. Well, it seems lately that 6:30 is now the new 7am. It is 6:08am. I am at a ...

Winning the Tech Talent War

November 16, 2017

Last night, I attended TalentMinded’s Next Generation Talent Acquisition meet-up on “How to Hire and Retain Tech Talent”. The panel included Jack Noppé, Chief Product Officer of Intelex Technologies Inc., Lauris Apse, Senior Director of Digital Operations at CBC, Malgosia Green, Chief Product Officer, TopHat and Gianluca Cairo, Chief of Staff, Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Government of Canada. The panel discussion ...

Why aren’t there more women in high tech sales?

February 8, 2017

A collaborative post from Shann McGrail and Pete Smith Last August, I published a post called, “Why do we hate (our own) sales people?”. Since then it has been viewed almost 150,000 times and received over 15,000 likes, comments, and shares. I have enjoyed reading the comments that my post generated. Many have been thought provoking, but none ...