BC Lions - CFL Western Conference Finals

I can add my first CFL (Canadian Football League) game to my list of things accomplished - a western conference final game at that. While the BC Lions did not fare well in the bout (losing 26 to 16 to the Saskatchewan Rough Riders) I really enjoyed the game and the experience.

A while back I wrote about my "First NFL Experience" and while the CFL experience was similar in some ways, it was also quite distinct. Firstly the atmosphere; there is something about being at a BC football game that makes you a little more patriotic. I found myself standing, cheering, “booing”, and thoroughly absorbed in the game (at least for the first 3 quarters). It wasn’t until the 4th quarter when BC took their fans out of the game by not completing plays, taking penalties, and unable to stop the Saskatchewan offence or defense. I do not pretend to be a big football fan, but even my wife who has rarely ever watched the sport felt that BC’s play-level just wasn’t there. Saskatchewan’s quarterback was bobbing and weaving (sorry more of a basketball fan) and ran more times than the BC QB got sacked.

For those who haven’t been to BC place, the view is great regardless of where you are sitting. The stadium is full enclosed so you don’t have to worry about the rain either. The announcer is bit annoying as his dialogue seems to consist of variations of “make some noise”, “bring the noise”, “louder, louder, and louder”. The stadium does a good job of keeping people entertained between plays with a Kiss Cam (random people from the crowd are displayed on the big screen and encouraged to kiss each other); hold the cup (a picture of the Grey Cup displayed and people pretend to hold it); and the Geroy Simons Dance Cam (random people videoed dancing in the stands). Entertainment was also provided from a few random fights where people were promptly escorted form the stadium or as the tag line goes “Be a Fan, not a Fool”.

While there were not as many people at BC Place (the upper bowl was empty in several sections), the Canadian experience really hit home for me, even if BC lost. On the way out of the stadium, my friend who attended with my wife and I asked if we wanted to go to the Canucks game which was occurring right after. I told him I didn’t have the heart to see 2 Canadian teams lose the same day J (As my sister-in-law would be quick to point out, the Canucks beat the Flames 4-1).

My 2 thoughts anyways…

Keepin It Brief

“Lululemon ditches tag touting benefits” – Vancouver based yoga wear promoter has agreed to cover up claims that their seaweed fibre clothes – VitaSea – provide health benefits including anti-inflammation, detoxification, and anti-bacterial properties.

My 2 Thoughts: This claim amounts to nothing more then watching infomercials on late night television. Wearing copper bracelets or Dr. Ho’s Massage System will appeal to some, but are we that gullible to think simply wearing a shirt (with properties no more distinct then cotton) is going to magically absorb vital nutrients and minerals into the skin. The health industry (salons and spas) make millions on these claims where they wrap you in seaweed for an hour to provide similar benefit. The difference with Lululemon is that it is a public company (traded publicly in the open market) and therefore is held to a higher standard then a private entity like you local salon. I personally enjoy the clothing as it is quite comfortable, but Lululemon is definitely capitalizing on the eco-sensitive crowd who is paying dearly for it. Therefore, if claims are being made it is as much buyer beware as it is the companies responsibility to provide accurate information of its products.

“October video games sales up 73%” – The Nintendo Wii has regained top spot in the US as the #1 selling console, however, Microsoft’s claims that their console (Xbox 360) has higher software sales (games) then either the Wii and PS3 combined.

My 2 Thoughts: I have a Wii. I purchased it because of my interest in the same technology that is used in cruise missiles (Wii remotes have wireless infrared sensors similar to technology used in guidance systems for missiles used in the military). I also bought the Wii because of price point. Futureshop has the consoles listed at the following prices: PS3 - $399.99 - $499.99, Xbox 360 - $299 - $499, and Wii - $269.99. Gaming consoles are classified as entertainment, so I asked myself what this entertainment was worth to me. I am not a hardcore gamer, I don’t play everyday (only when friends are over), and will rent the occasional game versus buy. For me the Wii was a hands down winner. Microsoft’s claim may be true but this is only because the console it self comes with nothing. The Wii comes with a sports package including introductions to games like tennis, boxing, bowling, baseball, and golf. I am only now getting the itch to buy another game to supplement my system. If your console comes with nothing, of course you are either going for a bundle package or supplementing games to your purchase.

“Wade – Shaq needs to step up” – The Miami Heat are in a 1-7 slump and Wade believes that Shaq needs to be more self-motivated if they are to turn the team around.

My 2 Thoughts: Dwayne Wade is a great player although his longevity in the league will be questioned given how hard he plays and the stress on his body. Nonetheless, Wade should not turn this into another Shaq-Kobe war where fruitless comments to the media that start to tear the two Heat stars apart. With more drama then Desperate Housewives, we all remember the Shaq-Kobe relationship that lead to the eventual departure of O’Neil from the Lakers. Kobe claiming Shaq was “less than manly” for sitting out with a toe injury, and Shaq claiming that his team “Lakers” would do better without the whiny comments from the second in command. Shaq is getting old, so his role has to naturally shift from that of a points leader to a role player helping to develop the talent on the bench. Career stats show a peak in 99-00 season and a steady decline since then moving from an average of 29 PPG (points per game average) to 14 PPG in the current season. If the Heat is to turnaround their losing streak, look to the bench to contribute versus putting the emphasis on the 35 year-old centre.

“A shameful day in Canada” – The death of polish immigrant continues to dominate media with blame targets including the Vancouver RCMP, YVR (Vancouver International Airport), and the any common citizen who chose to ignore the situation by walking by.

My 2 Thoughts – I can’t help but wonder if the situation would be any different if the immigrant was from a different nationality. We all know that CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) profile individuals as they enter security gates to determine “random” checks. By profiling, I am referring to the concept where assumptions are made about an individual from conscious or unconscious clues based on behavior, clothes or other characteristics visible to naked eye. In this concept, erroneous assumptions can result into action as profiling often occurs without any deeper or real knowledge of an individual. This being said, what if instead of a polish immigrant, clean-cut, and without head-ware, we had an individual from Islamic or Indian decent supporting a long beard with a turban or other head-ware. In a time where terrorist profiling is common, would the situation be any different if the latter was seen “hanging out” in the carousel area of YVR for 6 hours, struggling to communicate with anyone and becoming increasingly agitated? This is purely hypothetical but I hope it makes you think? The situation is far from black and white as blame can shift from the mother who asked her son to wrongly stay by the carousel when she had no feasible access to it; the common citizen who did not stop and help this poor immigrant in his time of distress; to YVR from not intervening sooner while this individual was a lot calmer; to the Police for their possible haste in how they handled the situation; to the Media for blasting everyone for the incident and raising Canada’s profile in international mediums contrary to our caring culture. I have my own personal bias but I said I would try and keep it brief.

Private Power Benefits BC Hydro

For a time I worked at the Business Development Bank of Canada. Part of the mandate of this bank was to support the development of small to medium sized businesses. This is how this federal mandated bank maintained its stature in a world dominated by the fab five (RBC, BMO, TD, ScotiaBank, CIBC). In fact, the structure of the bank is such that directors from each of these banks make up a board that regulates how the BDC operates within Canada.

In addition to having good credit, strong liquidity, and a working capital ratio greater than 1; the BDC’s policy on lending meant that you could only provide capital to a business that was creating gainful employment for the constituents of Canada. How does this relate to BC Hydro? Over the course of my employment at BDC, we had the opportunity to finance several IPP’s (Independent Power Producers). These projects required extensive capital to build, but once operational, cost little to maintain (if memory serves me correctly, a battery operated fan was the extent of the complexity). The only challenge was to make sure the estimates of water flow were correct and did not exceed or recede the levels agreed to in the 99 year energy contracts with BC Hydro.

We didn’t finance any of them (the IPP’s). I thought my branch manager was crazy as a steady cash flow and a contract as good as the government would appeal to anyone. Anyone but the BDC! As I mentioned before, any business that we were financing had to provide some notion of gainful employment to the community. Unfortunately for IPP’s, the employment to project ratio consisted of the two very rich owners and one maintenance guy that came around once or twice a year for service.

A new angle on the debate beyond the fact that BC Hydro is looking for private sources of power is who this deal with IPP’s really benefits. According to a Simon Fraser University economist (link) no one benefits from IPP’s except BC Hydro. Aside from the fact that these are lucrative contracts, BC hydro is looking to save energy from public facilities so that they can be sold at a higher value on the open market (mainly the US). What this means is that we could potentially be paying more for local sources of energy contracted at higher prices while cheaper public facilities sell energy also at a premium to benefit only BC Hydro. There was another article in BC Business that provides a good background on private power (link). “The 2002 BC Energy Plan (revised in spring 2007) is transforming BC Hydro from a generator of publicly owned electricity to a purchaser of energy from private power producers.”

Call me crazy but doesn’t it make sense for us to conserve energy so that we infact conserve energy (as opposed to using surplus energy to turn a profit on the open market)??

My 2 thoughts anyways….

Developing Leadership Impact: Executive Retreat at Royal Roads University

I recently attended a week-long retreat at Royal Roads University entitled "Developing Leadership Impact." Having attended a few course of similar nature, I told the facilitators that I was cautiously optimistic of the week ahead. I viewed the course as a bit of analysis of one self, knowing what your styles, behaviors, and strengths are as a leader so that you can successfully negotiate your way through your career. Indeed, I was partially correct on this assumption. My final reflections on the course had me state to the facilitators and group, “that I learned all about myself, but even more about those around me, and it was a pleasure to get to know everyone outside of work. For this I thank everyone who attended.” There was no real revelations within this course but a lot of self-reflection which is often the cause when you are trying to find out what exactly makes you “tick.” I particularly enjoyed conversations on theory and the use of “simple” models to explain the behavior of change and resistance.

Part of the pre-course work was to engage my boss, peers, and observers in a 360 degree review of myself. Boss being those individuals that I report to (or have in the past), peers are those in similar positions of authority, and observers are those individuals that report to me (or have in the past). The feedback revealed a slight halo effect in that I has underscored my performance when compared to that evaluation of my colleagues. I was pleased with the results and while there were no obvious gaps, a review with my coach revealed some areas of improvement around issues such as adaptability, facilitation skills, and globalism. Knowing my strong character, I purport this to possible intimidation by others in my presence, something I need to be more considerate of when dealing with introverts. Things I scored highest in included honesty and integrity, something I feel is the hardest to gain from your colleagues and I was pleased with these scores.

I also completed and received the results of an HBDI survey that assesses you thinking styles through correlation with what is called the Herrmann Whole Brain Model. The profile (a transparent sheet that shows your style based on 4 quadrants: facts, form, futures, and feelings) looks like a bullseye with the cross-hairs separating the 4 distinct quadrants. Some of this is based on left brain – right brain, but more of it has to do with where you comfort lies as an individual. For example, I scored high in facts, futures, and feelings categories (with a slight edge in futures). My least preferred style is form which revolves around being detailed, organized, and working in a sequential fashion. The interesting part of my score was a second dashed line that formed another shape between the first and showed that in times of stress I move further away from the forms quadrant and more into the futures quadrant. This result bolds well for my leadership style as I tend to back to organizational goals and visions to help direct our activities in a time of crisis. What was even more interesting than my scores was that of two colleagues in the class who when comparing results had shapes that were almost identical.

I was also asked to complete a Parker Team Survey(PTS) in preparation for this course. The PTS reveals your team player style when working within groups. The 4 distinct styles are contributor, collaborator, communicator, and challenger. Scores from a series of behavioral questions revealed I had two primary styles (scores within 3 points of each other) that included being a communicator and challenger. According to PTS, “I ensure that the members work well together while you push the team to address important questions about its strengths and weaknesses. However, you run the risk of seeing process as an end in itself. You need to keep in mind that the team must set long-term goals and work hard to deliver high-quality products and services that satisfy current customer needs.” The beneficial part of this exercise was how others in my team for this week-long retreat scored and how I could use those scores to understand their team player styles.

As eluded to in the earlier paragraph, I was put in team with 4 other individuals and assigned a business case for the Royal BC Museum. The purpose of this was to use learning’s within the class to work through a tangible case in the real world. Seeing as we only had a week and limited time outside of lectures to work on this, I was reminded of my younger graduate and undergraduate days where we worked on similar tasks. The challenge presented by the museum was one around declining revenues and admission and how we could revive the “presence” of the museum within the hearts and minds of British Columbians. What I learned form this task was that we had some very different styles on our team but worked well under pressure. One weakness was my automatic need to facilitate and in bringing the team some structure I also used a lot of my business related jargon. This provide a bit detrimental to the presentation as the other 2 groups worked more of a feel-good approach, something museum executives picked up on. Otherwise, our group came up with some very creative ideas from partnerships, global exhibits, and a theme-based game for kids.

The Developing Leadership retreat was great experience and one I would recommend to anyone. The retreat was sent in the old Hatley castle which belonged to the Dunsmuir family. This was a surreal part of the whole experience and a tour of the history helped me appreciate the architecture even more. It also helped to spend more than 14 hours a day in lectures and team work sessions there as well.

My 2 thoughts anyways…

I am, therefore I exist as a Leader

I am currently enrolled in day 3 of the the "Developing Leadership Impact: Executive Retreat. This is a personal leadership course that is administered by Royal Roads University. Within the 15 participants of this week long course, 12 of us are from the same Ministry.

I will update everyone further on my time here but needless to say that it has been pretty exhausting so far. The sessions run form 8:30am to about 6:00pm with work sessions in the evenings where 3 groups of 5 have been assigned a team project. The analysis is for Royal BC Museum and their struggles to engage British Columbians and thereby improving there bottom line. Challenges exist in a changing demographic, multitude of entertainment and recreational options, and a declining tourism industry in the rise of the CDN Dollar.

I will post our presentation at a later date to illustrate some of our recommendations.

My 2 thoughts anyways.......

"You can be successful and have enemies, or be un-successful and have friends"

***I have not included anything in this Blog that would be considered a spoiler or something that isn’t common knowledge from trailers***

At 53 Denzel Washington is still a pleasure to watch on the big screen, especially when his character is acting on the wrong side of the law. Not since Training Day have we seen Denzel’s character as bad and motivated as he is in his portrayal of Frank Lucas, an organized crime boss known for controlling the drug trade in Harlem, New York in the 60’s & 70’s. The movie,
“American Gangster” tells the true story of this African-American’s rise to be one of the most successful and feared gangsters at in America. Frank Lucas is eventually brought down by an honest cop by the name of Richie Roberts (played by Russel Crowe).

Myself and a few friends attended the premier opening of the movie to a sell-out crowd in Richmond. We arrived at the move theatre 45 minutes early to a line-up that was close to 100 people deep.

My expectations for the movie were high as I have never really seen a bad Denzel “flick”. His recent filmography includes: Déjà vu, Inside Man, and the Manchurian Candidate. However, it was back in 2001 when “Training Day” became Denzel’s claim to the coveted Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. This role had been such a departure from Denzel’s traditional good-guy roles but also proved to be his best performance. It was because of my infatuation with Training Day that I was hoping for another bad-ass performance from a similar role.

American gangster did not disappoint but is was also not Training Day. While Training Day developed characters through actions and dialogue, American Gangster was more autobiographic and focused to educated the viewer through a history of events. This movie was more dramatic and while it included periodic points of violence, the majority of the time was spent exploring the world of Harlem in the 60’s while American was at war with Vietnam and Denzel’s character was transporting heroine in soldier’s coffins returning home. The movie is very careful to subtly touch on racial implications of a “black man” superseding the mafia in the criminal world. Here is where I wish the movie had explored these racial tensions as I am sure they played a larger role then the movie leads you to believe.

Perhaps it is because I am more business minded, but one of Frank Lucas’s claims to fame is how he essentially cut-out the middle man in the drug trade by exporting heroine directly from Vietnam. By achieving this, he was able to reap a purer product and had the ability to sell it at half the price of market rates. As strange as this is going to sound, I was reflecting on this while leaving the movie and thinking of the Dell Direct model. Dell transformed the computer industry with its revolutionary mass customization model whereby sourcing products from contracted suppliers meant they could effectively cut-out retailers and sell directly to the consumer at a lower price. Not sure why I made the connection, but he more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Denzel’s character mentions that “he sells a product that people want, and he is able to sell it at half the price of the current market...that’s what makes him a wealthy business man.” While I am not encouraging everyone to embrace drugs, I am simply pointing out that every once in a while; someone comes along who thinks of the impossible as possible. I am sure Micheal Dell faced the same challenges (history tells us that he proposed the model in University only to be scoffed at by scholars) when thinking outside the box, albeit not life and death. While he revolutionized how computers our bought, Frank Lucas revolutionized what people thought was possible in the drug trade. Every time a product changes hands, a premium is added but in the case of drugs, the value-added also comes with an inferior product (often fractions of the original purity).

One of the best lines from the movie is the title of this particular blog, “You can be successful and have enemies, or you can be un-successful and have friends”.

I would definitely recommend watching American Gangster if you’re a history buff and into a strong dramatic role by to very qualified actors (Denzel and Russel Crowe ).

My 2 thoughts anyways….