Pretend You’re In Newfoundland: The Canadian Manager’s Manifesto
James Toccacelli is the president of Toccacelli & Associates, a Toronto-based public relations and communications consultancy.
By James Toccacelli
With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I thought I’d capture a series of random thoughts I’ve had over the years. Credit is also given to a number of friends and colleagues who have chosen to remain nameless but offered hilarious and poignant rules and examples:
Leadership isn’t always leadership, eh?
Much has been made of the hollowing out of middle management in Canada. Having worked at a number of US based-global companies, and consulted to a number of others I feel Canadian university’s should offer an MBA specifically for managers going to work for the Canadian division of global organizations. You should also be able to minor in US based “global” organizations. My observations follow:
While managing the Canadian division of a US company offers a unique set of challenges, and frustrations, there are a number of “tactics” that you can employ that will dull the pain, and offer a semblance of passive aggressive strategies you can use to your advantage.
- The Canadian – US $ exchange rate confuses many global managers, and you can use it to defend or support virtually any exception to a global mandate.
- If you do not wish to attend any “required” conference call, claim to be traveling on business in Newfoundland. The half hour time zone will create enough of a flurry of emails to make the call unnecessary.
- The metric system is your friend. If HQ is in the US, any report should be rife with KPI’s (see earlier reference) filled with metric “proof points”.
- Quebec language laws are gold. Many an ill-considered global strategy or tactic (those two words can be used interchangeably) can immediately be dismissed with the question: “have we built in the cost of French language translation?” Thank you Bill 101.
- When required, reference the US Patriot Act. No one really understands the Patriot Act, but it is the perfect reason why you can – or cannot – do virtually anything.
- Reply to every mocking reference to how you pronounce “out” and “about” with:“y’all I thought we solved this issue when we kicked your ass in the War of 1812”.
- Set Microsoft word to use British English — not American English — and watch all of the spellings you get “corrected” in track changes.
- Use the “Trojan Horse” strategy whereby you get a junior Canadian staffer gets sent to your US head office for a “development opportunity” or “special project.” In either case, expect the volume of official and unofficial information, context and gossip to increase exponentially. By the same token, understand the reason your staff was chosen was to ensure that important global staff were not distracted from their “mission critical” tasks.
- The cost (or lack of cost) of healthcare can be used to justify or prohibit virtually and hiring decision. In the same vein, you can use the difference in allowable practices for drug testing to delay or accelerate any hiring decision.
- No one should be sadder by the warming of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba except Major League baseball scouts looking for shortstops than Canadian middle managers. Once upon a time, the Helms-Burton Act (can’t do business with Cuba) and FEMA (it is against Canadian law to comply with a U.S. directive not to do business with Cuba) was the best thing to happen since Catch 22.
- Whenever possible invite your American leader up to Canada in the dead of winter. There is a very good chance they will arrive without a winter coat or boots. A colleague had a manager came to do a presentation in Ottawa with only his patent leather shoes and nearly froze to death in an Ottawa winter. Another expensed a parka when they thought 22 degrees would be well below freezing, only to find out the temperature was 22 degrees Celsius.
- Success is in the eye of the beholder, so make the American overload manager behold. I once orchestrated having a global CEO come to do an Empire Club speech that was an unmitigated disaster. He did a thirty minute advertorial as a luncheon speech that did untold damage to our company’s brand, however the room was full, as directed the water glasses did not have ice (he/she didn’t like the tinkling sound it made during their speech) and a fawning profile appeared in a newspaper the day of the speech. That’s the stuff that one can dine out for at least a generation of managers.
- Next to Bill 101, understanding the importance of compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is your biggest friend. First, you must understand that the FCPA isn’t about ethics, it is about the parent company having a program that can be referred to, when the inevitable breaches do occur, under the sentencing guidelines to reduce the sentence. Therefore, if you include a sentence something like “I’m not certain this course of action respects the spirit of our compliance with the FCPA” in the midst of a long email that will never be read, you are virtually bullet proof.
- Embrace technology. For instance:
- Get a broadcast quality speakerphone and ensure you are the only one who understands that *6 silently both mutes AND unmutes a conference call. Many a video game and exercise bike ride while watching SportCentre can be accomplished on global conference calls.
- Learn how to have “urgent” voicemail messages immediately forwarded to your cell phone. Many a corporate crisis has been solved on the 14th fairway when a voicemail message gets responded to immediately.
- If you can be the only person in the room who understand that Function 7 is what can gets the overhead projector to actually project the PowerPoint presentation du jour, your next performance review will certainly be “exceeds expectations”.
- Begin every presentation with a pirated copy of the “I Am Canadian” beer commercial. You will get a laugh, points for “innovation”, and make a not so subtle point.
Be free.