General – Meaford

Death by meeting?

March 1, 2021

Are you suffering from “death by meeting”? During the pandemic, consistent feedback is people are often back-to-back in meetings from dawn to dusk. Have you noticed your meeting load has increased and are you burning out from Zoom fatigue? Is this a pandemic and work-from-home phenomena or has the upward trend of meetings been increasing ...

Outcomes Only – Ground Hog day version

February 1, 2021

Happy Groundhog Day. Somehow, that phrase takes on a different meaning in 2021 during our pandemic times. Today, February 1st was a strange day. My conversations ranged from a friend who bemoaned that unless Ontario allows ski hills to open, that this may be the first season in over 60 years that he has not skied; to ...

Business Hugging in the post-COVID world

May 5, 2020

I am not a “hugger”. It was not part of the cultural norm of the family that I grew up in to hug on greeting or departure. When I started work at IBM in late 1970’s, proper business etiquette was a firm handshake for any occasion, whether it be an introduction, a greeting, a good-bye ...

Working post-COVID… for the times, they are a-changin’

May 4, 2020

You may have seen the headline “OpenText won’t reopen half of its physical offices post COVID-19 pandemic”. In the article, the writer says Opentext’s CEO Mark Barrenechea “is saying out loud what a lot of C-level executives are thinking. The new normal will require less commercial real estate as the capital expenses required can be deployed ...

A middle manager’s guide to managing in an economic downturn

March 26, 2020

You are a manager or director in a small or medium sized company. This is your first or second management role and you have never experienced the business turmoil of the past two weeks. What should you do now and what should you be doing next? The answer to the first question is likely more ...

The Problem with Youth Unemployment: a Call to Action

September 21, 2017

I regularly listen to CBC Radio and often hear stories documenting the challenges that educated and talented young people are facing finding employment in their field. These stories often stereotype young people with one or two degrees who can only find employment as a barista or waiter/waitress in a restaurant. Unfortunately, I do not think ...

Career Advice 101 – Observations looking back over many years

September 14, 2017

When I was in my twenties and thirties, I didn’t have a career plan. Even though IBM invested heavily in employee development, I never took career planning seriously and unlike many of my peers, I never aspired to become a CEO or senior executive. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and worse, I ...

LinkedIn Behaviour & What it says about You

February 13, 2017

Frequently, I get invited to connect to people on LinkedIn whom I don’t know. Generally, I have a rule that I never accept an invitation to connect from anyone that I have not either met or spoken with on the telephone. I do this to keep my connections to people that are in my industry ...

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 ...

Why Do We Hate (our own) Sales People (Part III)

January 10, 2017

I received the following comment from David Field about my last post: “Another good article, but with so much feedback on part 1 in relation to ‘some of it is deserved’ it would be great to see some pointers on why the top ten things that make delivery hate sales have to be done, or how ...

Category: General