In the early 1970’s I worked for Canadian Pacific Ltd.  This was a monolithic company that started as a private Canadian railroad company and then branched out into shipping (freighters), trucking, hotels, forestry products, air transport, mining and probably a few others.  Today all the pieces have been sold to various other companies and the railroad is all that remains.   In the 1970’s though they were a very large and successful conglomerate.  This of course is before it became popular for Corporations to go “back to their roots”

The Background

My job was a porter on the passenger train that went from Vancouver to Montreal every day.  That is one train left Vancouver and one left Montreal every day.  It took the train about 6 days to cross the country.  I traveled from  Vancouver to Winnipeg and back, a two and a half day journey each way.  The work schedule was 6 days on (3 out and 3 back, with an overnight in Winnipeg) and then 4 days off.  We were paid for 20 hours days (hey your porter is almost always on duty) so it was not bad money wise.

I don’t recall how many times I did the round trip but more than 10 for sure.  It’s a funny thing how hindsight works.  I was traveling frequently relaxing long trips through what could arguably be classified as some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world.  Had I understood then what I know now,  I would have appreciated it much more, much more than viewing it just as a high paying job (I might have paid them).

The Story

From those years, a few stories stand out in my mind and over time I will probably share more of those but today’s interesting story is how a conglomerate like CP could stretch their muscles in those days.

On our way into Calgary news arrived of a derail in the Rockies east of Banff.   Our train was not going through.  CP brought buses (from the companies bus line) to the train station in Calgary and bused us to the Calgary airport where we took a CP Air jet to Kamloops (porters and passengers).  We were bused (via CP’s busline) to the Kamloops train station.  The porter crew and the passengers going west of Kamloops picked up the westbound train there, those whose original destination had been between Banff and Kamloops got the east bound train.   Hey if you can do it why not.

Progress

Of course today, all has changed.  Via rail runs the passenger train from Vancouver to Montreal (via Jasper not Banff) and it is not daily (evry 2nd day in the summer though) and a private company called the Rocky Mountaineer  runs a train from Vancouver to Calgary (as a tourist experience).   There is no cross country passenger train on the CP tracks any more (a pity).

There are other private train companies taking advantage of the rails in the Rockies, for example one that runs a half day train from Jasper to Dunster through the Yellow Head pass (and then buses you back) on the Jasper to Prince George part of the CN line.

I once attended a town hall at the Bank of Montreal hosted by the CEO at the time, Tony Comper.

The gist of the presentation was how to reconcile what appeared on the surface to be competing Corporate priorities – grow revenue/ reduce expenses.  I mean you have to spend money to make money after all.

The point Mr Comper focused on was the need to focus on the holistic result (the ultimate goal).  In this case improved profitability.    If you have greater revenue produced at a lower cost it does not take a rocket scientist to determine profit will increase.

The real question here is finding the balance between increasing revenue and reducing cost such that as you succeed at one objective, it  feeds and supports the achievement of the other.  If this works both ways think of the momentum created.

Today’s musing is not about business success, the BMO example is just to frame the concept, which is in fact generic and can apply to any objective whether personal or business.

Like my blog of a few days ago on the art of war, this one on “balance your way to success” is just about ideas that can make your life easier and better.

What is it?

Balance as  a behavioral concept is not about compromise.  Nor is it “I can live with that”.   To successfully use this technique you must think in terms of “win/win”  (I can’t take credit for that concept by the way as it is firmly embedded in the Harvard Technique for Negotiation).

The key to this practice is to be clear on the goal.  In fact “focus on the goal”  Which of course means you have to have a very clear understanding of what it is.

Next determine what the objectives are to achieve the goals.

And finally optimize how the objectives are achieved so they complement each other (win/win), in essence the success of one feeds off the success of the other.  The process will naturally result in balanced objectives.

How about an example?

In this example the goal is to be more relaxed.

One objective is to achieve greater success at your employment; to receive more praise, feel less stress; be confident and comfortable in your long term prospects.

Another objective is to work less, shorter hours, experience more free time and not think about or focus on stressful things (veg out!)

On the surface these are competing objectives.  In fact working  working more efficiently with a greater focus and higher quality should lead to shorter hours and less thinking about work in down time.  Don’t think of the way to  achieve the first objective as working harder (longer) but rather use the time allocated to your employers wishes more effectively.  If you do this praise and success will come your and more free time too.

What’s my point?

This is pretty simple.  Think about what the goal is and what are the associated objectives to best achieve it before leaping in to solve for goal success.  Think it through.  To use a tired but accurate old phrase when it comes to achieving your goals work smarter not harder.  Think about it!

Today’s post are some high level thoughts about an intriguing ancient Chinese text.  Amazing the level of logic, understanding and awareness within the human race over 1500 years ago.

My intent is more to titillate and get you interested in the book, not explain it to you.   Just the basic book on the original Art of War text is 40 pages or so and a couple of hours read.  There is some cool knowledge within the text, well worth exploring

What is it?

This is an ancient Chinese book often attributed to General Sun Tzu as author, thought to be written in mid 500 AD.  Scholars are divided on whether there were multiple authors and if the text began even earlier in the Han era (early to mid 200 AD).  Even the lifetime and events of Sun Tzu are unclear with the time period and accomplishments of his life (his bio) constantly being researched and defined.

This blog is about the text.  Given the original text is an ancient dialect it’s impossible to have an exact English translation.  That being said, the power in the text is the philosophical base of the content (however accurately translated).   Many argue that the text well fit’s the modern world not as a Philosophy of war but more a tombe on managing conflicts and winning (not necessarily a physical  battle but rather an objective)

So What’s in it for me?

Like most things you get out of it what you put into it.  Basically it is a set of ideas constructed as rules.  The practice of which helps you improve the likelihood of achieving your personal objectives.

A couple of my favorite thoughts, these are paraphrased not quotes (my strategic/philosophical interpretation in brackets). There are more than 10 of these rules in the book:

• don’t engage in battle unless you know you are going to win (select objectives where chance of success is high).
• know your enemy  (understand how the opponent thinks and reacts)

So how do I get started?

The first step obviously is to get a translation and read it – there are many of these with different interpretations and suggestions on how to practice the “rules”.

I have read several of these books and ultimately in my view the book you want is one that is a short simple direct translation (as direct as possible anyway given best English translation of ancient writings from China in 4th century). What I mean is you don’t necessarily needs the self help authors interpretations – try your own.

The beauty of the books is the fact it is really comprised of simple rules that work.  Some will resonate with you more than others.  (I mentioned a few of my favorites above).  Pick the things that map to your personal value system, practice them and it is likely you will get results.

What is it

When you buy something, say a pair of jeans, you use what you know to assign a value.  For example brand new levis 407 boot cut might be worth $80 to you.  When you see them on sale in Winner’s for $50 the purchase seems like a good value.  Given it would be hard to find a pair for less than say $70 the price for that design, quality and brand leads to the value decision.   Purchasing equity in a company is basically the same thing.  The cost per share is just an indication of the value of the equivalent piece of company represented by 1 share.

How about an example?

Let’s say kerrzone.com has issued 1 share (and one share only).  If kerzone’s equipment and other real assets were estimated to  worth $10,000 and the share was being sold for just $1000, there would be a strong argument that this was a great value investment.  Arguably you could buy the share and sell all the assets and make $9000 clear just like that.  The caveat of course is the worth of the assets – could they really be sold for the stated $10,000?  What if the sale price was actually $100, whoops!

Remember in the real world the company’s value is complicated by things like intangible assets (intellectual property, worth of the brand, future profit growth, etc)

So how do I pick these value investments?

Talk about a loaded question.  If there were a simple answer investors in the equity market would all be doing fine.  The short answer is hard work – analysis.  There is no other way and there is no exact process or method to say the analysis is sure fire.  That being said though there are plenty of examples where hard work has gotten results – more so that where luck has succeeded. 

MORE TO COME

In future posts I will share some of the analysis methods that work, why they work and most importantly proof that they work.