Many of my friends and collegues will attest to the fact that I am known to proudly proclaim on occassion “It’s all about me!”

This statement makes me neither conceited nor egotistical.  The reality is that this is my life, just as yours belongs to you.  Its my life so it’s about me, logically speaking.

Caution must be exercised with the interpretation of this pronouncement.  Its all about me does not include by default “at the expense of others” nor “others don’t matter”.

How great am I?

If I believe I am the greatest than I am.  The qualifier though is this greatness assessment is personal and against my own bar (measure).  Others measures and characterization of my capabilities may differ and of course these opinions matter ( to those people, anyway).

Most Important opinion

At the end of the day what you think about yourself carries the most weight.  Even if others think you are the most skilled personable person on the earth and you yourself do not; than you are not.

So I am proud to say, I am great and it is all about me.  Shame is a false emotion with little value.  Empathy of how others are feeling and a realistic understanding of where your personal greatness assessment needs to be reigned in out of respect for others is critical.

It is all about me, but others are of critical importance.

If you are throughly confused at this point, this post sounds contradictory to you – just remember the mantra ” Its all about me” .  That should make you feel better, works for me.

I read about a CEO the other day, whom others characterized as exhibiting high integrity and respect for other.  It was the first time I had heard these two behaviors specifically linked and it really resonated with me.

Integrity and Respect

My first thought was, “As a unified behavior, what does this look like?”

Combining the definition of each word you get something like “Exihibiting a strong sense of honesty and morality while recognizing others  for their abilities, qualities or achievements.”

The underlying theme is being a person of good character consistently and particularly in the prescence of others.

Trust

Most likely whomever you come across clearly exhibiting these behavioural traits will engender your trust.  Trust is a foundational attribute for an exceptional leader.  While you may excel in other leadership traits there is a bar you probably cannot leap over without the trust of your followers.

In this context integrity and respect are powerful and critically important traits for those that aspire to be viewed as an exceptional leader.

Interesting to hear others describe the CEO’s behaviour this way, I think I have some new personal aspirational goals..

The importance of clear communication was reinforced to me the other day as the result of a misunderstanding.  The negative impacts associated with misunderstanding largely fall into two categories.

Work or Re-work

This is a favorite of process engineers when trying to make operations consistent and repeatable.  When things are unclear or misunderstood by any of the stakeholders involved with the process efficiency both time and quality suffer.

Anger/ Frustration and Interpersonal Conflict

One of the most unpleasant outcomes of misunderstandings  is they often involve competing positions and views.  Each party has a perspective and they don’t match.

Often one party feels injured by the outcomes of the misunderstanding and the other party does not get it.  For example think of a time when you complained to a service provider when they misunderstood your instructions ,did not do what you wanted or expected and didn’t understand when you complained.

How to reduce the risk of misunderstandings

One of the most frequent methods used to overcome these potential misunderstandings are written or verbal validations built right into the process steps.  This technique can be applied to things like meetings (post meeting minutes) , product orders (written ackowledgements), action instructions (signed agreements) and so on.

Unfortunately even the validation/ confirmation does not always work and issues still arise.

In these cases it is often most helpful to assume there was no malicious intent .  This works well if applied by all stakeholders to the misunderstanding.  In this way recrimination and bad feelings are avoided.

The impacts are clearly outlined by each party and a collaberative solution developed.

The jobless rate in Canada is on the rise.  Panic ensues about the vibrancy of the economy particularly the resource sector.  And through all the articles about these things, I rarely see the issue of the shift in the workforce balance commented on.

This is a bit strange to me as I am pretty sure it is going to drive the shape of the economies around the world over the next 10 years.

Consider the Boomers

The baby boomer generation covers those born between 1945 and 1965.  The birth rate for this group is like a bell curve.  That is lowest at either extreme (1945 and 1965) and the highest in the middle (1955).

This distribution applies to this generations retirement plans as well.  In 2015 it is estimated approximately 16% of the population of 35,000,000 in total is retired.  This is currently increasing by 3.5% at year now and as more boomers become eligible this rate will rise.

Also, often not taken into account is the fact only 18% of the boomers are currently retired,  although considering the 20 year span of the boomer generation those in the first 5 years of the boomer generation account for 25% of the time period.

As we move to 2020 thru to 2024 more like 82% of boomers will move into retirement and the retired population of Canada (taking the death rate into account) will climb to 20%.

Basically taking retirees and children into account there are currently 23.8 million  people at working age.  In 2024 this will drop to 22.4 million a reduction of 1.4 million.  (Birth, death and population growth rates assumed to balance out)

There are currently about 1.5 million unemployed people in Canada.  By this analysis (which is high level at best) we are cruising for zero unemployment.

Horrors, who will be willing to work at Walmart?  Who is going to support all the children and old people.  What will happen to the role of the Walmart greeter?

Work Force Down/ Demand for Workers Up

By my calculations, in 10 years the balance between supply (available workers) and demand (need for workers) is going to shift dramatically.  Good for the grandchildren’s job prospects I guess.

In the TV show Lost in Space the space family Robinson travel through the galaxy with their faithful robot “Robbie”.  I believe the TV series had a big screen movie version made several years ago.

I remember the notable phrase from the movie was when the robot (Robbie) was warning the intrepid juvenile, “Will Robinson” that he was about to experience something harmful.

The refrain “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger” has stuck with me through the ages as a great warning line.  Although I am not sure it has the same resonance to the younger generation.

Information Thieves

The historic line “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger” rang through my head the other day as I was the victim of a really great site impersonation.

Given I have an expert level of internet security expertise (gained through years of professional training and experience) it is surprising I was vulnerable to the attempt – and also an indication of the attackers sophistication.

The Story

Several weeks ago my Apple TV streaming slowed down.   Last week I reporting the issue on the Apple web site logging in with my ID and password to use their secure messaging services.

The automated reply to my issue report stated I could expect a response in two to three days later.

Two days later I received an email from apple support stating there was an internal message awaiting me and providing a linking.  Normally I would have immediately recognized this as phishing and deleted.

However, in this case I was expecting an email from apple so clicked the link (great timing on the attackers part, not sure if it was luck or planned).

Anyway the link presented the apple ID login page (exactly as it looks on the apple site) and I was not paying attention to the URL, so I logged in.  The response was that my account was locked and to activate it I needed to fill in my personal information.

Although extremely annoying I must admit this was all very clever.  I might be dense but when you hit me over the head twice I do get it.

I immediately closed my browser and went to the real apple site and logged in (surprise, not locked) and changed my password  (I do this relatively regularly anyway).

Kudos to the Miscreant Hacker though

Much as the attempt angers me, unlike so many phishing attempts I see this one was pretty well thought out.  All I can say it there is some value to the mantra “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”

I heard an interesting story the other day from a young couple trying to open some new accounts.  Things have changed a lot in the almost 40 years since I opened bank accounts for The Bank of Montreal.

Fraud

The incidence of fraud and identity theft has made financial institutions more cautious and documentation requirements have increased to some extent.  This makes the account open process take a little longer.

Also you need to share more information with the nameless faceless institution run by fat cats sitting in their towers of gold ( but that is a different rant for another time)

These changes I can live with, uncontrolled marketing and unwanted sales I cannot.

On line Banking/Fintrac Competition

I used to post the branch general ledger manually and then monthly, quarterly and yearly I filled in the balance sheet by hand.  I used a burroughs tape calculator to add up the figures and balance everything (museum pieces these days, but really it was not that long ago.)

Today its all about automated online, instant access.  Software applications are becoming more sophisticated and major Canadian Financial Institutions ( the big banks) are experiencing heated competition from the so called Fintrac sector which consists of a variety of companies providing Financial services cheaper and faster than the big Banks.

As a result the large Canadian banks have spread their wings somewhat purchasing online financial service providers ( e.g. Tangerine) or cutting deals with major retailers (e.g. Canadian Tire, PC Financial)

In turn these retailers and brick and mortar bank alternatives have been aggressively pushing their financial services.

Marketing Push

To some extent todays financial service representatives are more about giving their customers products than giving them what they need or want.

The young couple I mentioned at the beginning of this post were recent casualities of this sell product at any cost mentality when they went to open a new account at PC Financial.

Products they did not want were pushed on them by the ruthless sales person.  The result was confusion and ultimately cleaning up the mess this sales person made cost them a lot of time and effort.

All they wanted was a simple account not a myriad of services of no interest to them.  And PC Financial’s response to their complaint about the poor service was sadly lacking.

A piece of advise to PC Financial, if you want a long term relationship ( and this makes the most sense) be more aware of what your customers want and need.

Pay attention to the customer not the number of products you push.  In the long run this is a far more successful strategy..

There is a very strong possibility Donald Trump is going to win the Republican party nomination for president of the United States.

Following the “super Tuesday ” primary vote on March 1st Google reported the most common query originating in the United States was “How do I become a Canadian?” Hmmm.

What do Trumps speeches say about him?

Whether by listening to a  Trump speech, debate or reading his policy statements I find it hard to classify him as anything but:

• a racist (clearly stated plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and block all Muslims from entering the country are just my first clues.)
• a sexist (enough comments about menustration and how women are meant to look good, really there is more to females than that)
• a bully (your fired – nuff said)

My own puzzle is, who would vote for a leader with those three attributes both obvious and front and centre to all his actions?

Playing off fear works

My conclusion is he is using peoples fear (fear of immigrants, job losses, terrorism, loss of family values) to gain support .  By promising to address and resolve these fears he gains support.

Unfortunately those he persuades do not see the far reaching  impacts of these actions.  Nor do they believe Trump would direct his viterol against them.   They are part of the superior race after all.

Deja Vu

This manipulation of the masses is not new and throughout mankinds history there are lots of examples.  What is disappointing to me, in this age of tolerance and enlightenment; racist, sexist , bullys can still thrive.