Blogmatic

One of the key success factors for a great company in Jim Collins “Good to Great”, another must read, is Level 5 Leadership. Level 5 Leadership is a kind of leadership from beside where the leader puts the team first and remembers there is no I in Team. There are those that say yes, but there is an “I” in win. This is exactly my point regarding great companies, teams and the people that lead them.

If what you hear when your leader speaks is I, me and myself there is a strong probability that this is not a level 5 leader. Level 5 leaders say we, our and us they put the team before themselves. If you are in an organization where leadership speaks in terms of me rather than we probably best to consider your options.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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For some time there have been rumours of an elephant in Ottawa’s tech sector. Many have raised the issues but they are quickly dismissed.

I saw Terry Mathews speaking to a group of business executives on the news at noon today. The tone of the speech was that the technology sector in Ottawa was dying and if something weren’t done it would be gone in five years. A pretty sombre and sobering message for those in attendance I am sure.

Here is Ottawa’s leading entrepreneur saying that there is a problem in Silicon Valley North and if I recall correctly also stating that Ottawa did not deserve the title of Silicon Valley North. In fact Sir Terry Mathews mentioned that he is now finding more opportunities elsewhere in the world, rather than in Ottawa.

My take is that for someone of Terry Mathew’s stature to state publicly that there is a problem, then not only is there a problem but one that has existed for some time. The problem of trouble in the sector at the grass roots level has been felt for years but to ripple to the highest levels of Ottawa’s industry elite then this is a significant problem that has persisted for some time.

The fact that Terry Mathews says there is a problem is not really a surprise to anyone, however, the reaction of our Municipal and economic development leaders is surprising. The Mayor says other than provide a safe city environment for workers there is little he as mayor can do.  The president of OCRI is quoted on the TV responding to a reported with “lets get a committee together to discuss about the problem”.

First of all there is lots the Mayor can do. He is the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the area with a $3B annual budget (operating and capital). The city invests $1.6M annually in economic development. What return are we the taxpayer receiving for this investment, which is more than 5X what was being invested in 2000? The mayor is accountable and his hands off attitude is disappointing.

The first step in fixing any problem is admitting that yes, in fact there is a problem. To date all the news and metrics coming out of OCRI indicate a thriving tech sector. If there is a problem, and I believe there are many issues, then the first step should be an admission that there is a problem.

In every problem there are the seeds of opportunity. I will have a post on Monday regarding what I believe to be the major issues and proposed solutions.

Terry has said there is an elephant in the room and now Ottawa will take notice.

Cheers and have a great weekend.

Ian Graham

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I think I may be just a little ahead of my time (27 days in fact). If you read Peter Hume’s column in today’s edition of the Ottawa Citizen’s Tech Weekly it has a very similar sentiment to my post “Ottawa’s Technology Metamorphosis” dated 02-March-2007. Cool.

This post really is little big news. Small changes can make huge differences in how people perceive and remember things. This post is about how changing three little letters can make a BIG difference.

The idea for this post came from the book “Winning Friend and Influencing People”, one of the best books of all time. Perhaps one of the most challenging things a person will have to do is offer suggestions to someone on how to improve performance. Most people take the path of  “You did a really great job, “BUT”. Some sort of compliment followed by the word “BUT”. As soon as the person hears the word “but” they know the hammer is about to drop. Whatever compliment was said before the word “BUT” is lost and what the person remembers is what comes after “BUT”, which usually isn’t good.

Here is the three-letter solution: Change BUT to AND. This will make all the difference in the world.

Here is an example regarding my son and his school work:

Gareth you did a good job at school this semester BUT you will need to work harder next semester to improve.

Gareth you did a good job at school this semester AND if you work a little harder you will do even better next semester.

See what I mean. AND somehow makes you put things in a more positive tone and removes the BUT hammer dropping.

Try it, it really works!!

Cheers and have a great weekend.

Ian Graham

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Google’s dominance of the pay per click market is being challenged. Microsoft adCenter is taking aim at the B2B portion of Internet giants business. This is probably old news to many of you, but it was news to me. What drew my attention to this topic was a direct mail piece from Microsoft ad Centre to my business.

Last week I received in the mail a Microsoft adCenter brochure directed to Klondike soliciting my online advertising business. Pretty cool. Then I noticed that it is in conjunction with Sympatico MSN, strike one. The collateral is nicely done but doesn’t say a whole lot and is certainly not compelling me to go and check out this Google wanna be. The collateral had the look and feel of a logoless Frank and Gordon collateral piece, very likely Bell influenced. Strike two. Finally and probably most importantly the URL they want me to type in is 45 characters long with lots of  “/”  “.”,  Strike three.  Why not advertise Internet pay per click advertising to small businesses on the Internet rather than in print, have the medium match the message. There is so much more to be said on the content, medium and message of the adCentre ad but this will suffice for now.

What I did find both interesting and troubling at the same time was that Microsoft adCenter provides demographic targeting capability. This is good for the company that wants to target specific demographics but bad for the consumer whose demographics are being tracked. You can target age, gender and location, hmmm…. No problem with location but where did they obtain and how are they tracking age and gender. Something very big brotherish about all this gathering and tracking of consumer demographic data.

Anyway back to the original clash of the titans theme. Google and Microsoft has been a match up waiting to happen for some time and it was only a question of where the first battle would take place. It looks like the online AdWars have started. Google is one of my all time favourite companies and Microsoft is right up there too, this is truly a “Clash of the Titans” with two very capable combatants. With Bell as Microsoft’s partner in Canada this would give a big advantage to Google. This is “THE Clash of the Titans” and one I will dedicate a few posts to over the coming weeks and months.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

PS, on the Bell-to-Bell calling front it appears that this is only for B2B and B2C calling not C2C. There was an ad in the newspaper today that clarified the offering, however, I am sure the Bell radio spots are creating confusion in the market place.

PSS, I noticed that recently, yesterday, a number of blogs have leveraged the SCAN of the brochure I had on the web. This was done without my knowledge or consent.
 

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Don’t let the title fool you it is not what you think.

The story of invisible angels is a happy one, and different than the visible angels that you can see but aren’t investing.

Fact or fiction, do invisible angels exist?

Yes, I firmly believe that invisible angels do exist and I have seen one or two. Invisible angels are investors that come from more traditional business backgrounds rather than technology and they have money to invest. They are looking for good business opportunities to invest in and they keep a low profile.

If they exist where do I find them?

As I mentioned I have only come across a couple so far and as of yet haven’t been able to state definitively their habitat. However, a worthwhile government initiative would be to incent the invisible angels to become more visible. I think that LSIF used to be the glue that held invisible angels together. When the current provincial government cancelled the LSIF program many of the angels disappeared or at least became harder to find, but they do exist.

I will be sure to keep you posted of future sightings.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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This is the second in a series of reports on Bell, Rogers, Telus and I also added in Shaw Cable for the Internet Access portion of the Wireline report. I never realized that Shaw had such a large share of the Internet Access market in Western Canada.

The Wireline divisions of Bell and Telus covers a whole lot of ground, so I have decided to split it up into a number of smaller bit size pieces as follows:

Wireline
- Internet Access (Today)
- Voice Services (Landline and VoIP)
- Long Distance
- Data (Maybe, Maybe Not)

What this means is the series of reports on Bell and Rogers will extend over about a 9 or 10 week period instead of the 4 or 5 I mentioned in my last post. I have also expanded the scope somewhat and included Telus and Shaw Cable because they are key contributors in the Canadian Internet Access Market.

The Internet Access market is in my opinion at saturation. There will continue to be some growth but likely at a mid single digit rate for the foreseeable future. The majority of new adds for any of the service providers will be a result of population growth and churn from one vendor to another.

The Internet Access market is limited by the three key factors (there are likely others): Digital Divide, the Rural Divide and those that just don’t want Internet access. The source of the digital divide is mainly economic circumstance that prohibits families of limited means from being able to afford high speed Internet. The Rural Divide is caused by the lack of technology to engage many in rural parts of Canada that tend to rely on dial up instead of high speed internet. Finally there are those that just don’t want access to the Internet, I can’t imagine such a thing myself.

All these factors combined total approximately 30% of the households in Canada. According to the 2001 Canadian Census there were approximately 10.8M households in Canada. Bell, Rogers, Telus and Shaw already serve the vast majority of the 7.6M addressable markets and when you add to that the assorted smaller ISPs and you have a market that is very close to saturation.

More details can be found in the Wireline: Internet Access Report (Coming soon).

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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I was driving in the car the other day and I heard a Bell radio spot. The ad said something to the effect that Bell-to-Bell calling is now free on your Bell wireless phone. Wow, I thought something innovative from Bell, very cool.

Arrived home and pondered about this most unusual circumstance a bit. Innovation and Bell there has got to be something wrong here. Then I remembered, I think Fido (now Rogers) had or still has free calls within users on their wireless network.

The circumstances between Fido and Bell are somewhat different. Fido had no installed base at all and was looking at stealing share from existing providers; therefore their user-to-user free calling was very low risk. Bell on the other hand has a very large installed base that could be at risk and like Fido are looking to steal share from their competitors, mainly Rogers. In my opinion the Bell free user-to-user calling gambit makes sense if Bell believes they can attract more new subscriber revenue than they will lose in existing wireless revenue. Hmm … , not sure about that one.

My blogmaitc prediction is that one likely outcome of this scenario is the inverse New Coke effect. The New Coke effect is when the makers of Coke introduce “New Coke”. Loyal Coke drinkers revolted demanding old Coke. This resulted in much publicity and the re-instatement of “Classic Coke”. The Bell Effect starts with many happy existing wireless subscribers when they get a few free calls per month on the new Bell-to-Bell calling plan. Bell wireless revenues start to decline and at some point in the future Bell will need to re-instate Bell-to-Bell calling FOR FEE. The result many irate Bell wireless customers will leave and go elsewhere. Generally speaking people are OK with lower prices, just don’t try and raise them again.

Just had another thought, this also depends on how much of Bells wireless business is “consumer” and how much is “enterprise”. My discussion above is more with respect to the consumer side. On the enterprise side may the gambit may play out somewhat differently.

Anyway, an interesting development to keep tabs on in the coming months. Tomorrows post will be the Bell / Rogers / Telus Wireline report.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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I have decided to change the name of my blog from Ian’s Blogmatic Blog to just plain old Blogmatic. Still caputres the same sentiments and is easier to remember.

cheers,

Ian Graham

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I usually like to do my life long learning posts on Fridays. Today’s life long learning post is related to “The Law of Reciprocity”. There are many other sayings that have the same or a very similar meaning:

- You reap what you sow,
- What goes around comes around,
- Deepak Chopra’s the Law of Giving,
-  And many, many more.

I believe that the reason there are so many different variations on this theme is that reciprocity is an incredibly important law and has a significant impact on people’s lives. The Law of Reciprocity in my opinion is one of the better representations of the concept because the name captures the giving and receiving aspects. To illustrate this law I thought I would use, well guess what, a coffee example.

Tim Horton’s is certainly one of my favourite coffee shops and there is one store in particular on Greenbank Road that I frequent. The reason I frequent this particular Tim Hortons is that it is on my way to Bruce Pit (one of the few areas in the City of Ottawa where you can walk your dogs off leash, don’t get me going on the City of Ottawa administration) and they give their day old Tim Bits out as dog Tim Bits. So when I drive up to the drive through speaker I order my large coffee with two cream (I gave up double double a few years ago) and ask if they have any dog Tim Bits today. They almost always do and my Dogs Spencer and Fraser love Tim Bits.

Sounds interesting but how does this relate to the law of reciprocity.

Well here comes the part about reciprocity. About this time last year I wanted to thank the wonderful ladies at Tim Horton’s for all the great service. I decided to give them an un-birthday present for Fraser’s birthday. Basically my dogs and I gave the ladies at Tim Horton’s a box of chocolate and a thank you note for all of the wonderful service. Judy, Jean and Cindy (Tim Horton’s ladies, who I know by name) were so happy with the present that they now make sure Spencer and Fraser always have their dog Tim Bits even if the day olds are all gone. A little kindness goes a long way.

Frasers birthday is next week and I will be giving the ladies at Tim Horton’s another un-birthday present this year.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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I explained how I decided on the template for my blog but never did let everyone now how blogmatic was chosen as the name.

Mostly it had to do with the fact that I thought the name sounded kind of cool. It also rhymes with dogmatic which could be a good or bad thing. Being so dogmatic in your beliefs and points of view that you are unyielding and will not change would be the bad thing. Being able to look at a situation and develop an informed point of view could be another interpretation. My thoughts were more toward the later and having an informed and principled point of view.

If you think about points of view and decision-making there are essentially three states. The first state is to have made a good decision. This is the ideal state and everything has worked out in your favour. Great. The second state is to make a bad decision. This is not the ideal state, however, you can learn from your mistake alter your course and then make a better decision. Learning is good. The third state is the state of indecision. In my opinion this is the worst state because the company or individual flounders aimlessly and nothing is accomplished. No good decision, no bad decision just a state of ambiguity.

Therefore in my opinion making a well-reasoned decision is usually the best course of action. Best case you do the right thing right away. Worst case you made a bad decision that proves as a lesson in life, you change your course and move on all the wiser.

That is what I was thinking of when I chose the name blogmatic.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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