CONFERENCE PREVIEW
EVERY PILOT NEEDS A FLIGHT PLAN
Management Consultant Shares Strategies to Keep Your Company Soaring
The corner office isn’t what it used to be. Assumptions
need challenging, attitudes need changing and strategies need adopting, says
management consultant Michael Canic. In response to the needs of CEOs and other
executives in the APEGGA membership, the Annual Conference brings him to Edmonton
for a special Executive Track presentation.
BY GEORGE LEE
The PEGG
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Are Myths Your Rulers?
It’s human nature to cling to unsuccessful attitudes in the office. Below
are Michael Canic’s top three executive myths — the attitudes you
may need to dump if you want your department or organization to succeed.
Number 1 Holding people accountable means you are a cruel
person. The truth is that you can be a kind, caring, compassionate person and
still hold people accountable. As an executive, your loyalty must ultimately
be to the enterprise, the greater good. Sometimes you must cut off a finger to
save a hand.
Number 2 It’s all about you. The successful executives I have worked with
have all had control of their egos. Yes, successful executives need strong egos
to make tough decisions and take risks. The issue is: are you in control of your
ego or is your ego in control of you?
Number 3 Success is an entitlement. What made you successful
in the past could kill you in the future. One of my primary goals is to have
executives attack their assumptions and find the pain that will drive them to
change. |
The career paths of many APEGGA professionals lead to the proverbial
corner office — the
upper management positions in government or in companies with provincial, national
and even international profiles. The Association encourages these members to
use their designations with pride, remain on the register and meet mandatory
professional development requirements, even though their jobs have left the day-to-day
practices of engineering, geology and geophysics.
The problem for executives, however, is in finding professional
development opportunities relevant to their careers. They have little time, they
tell APEGGA, for PD sessions designed for the professionals out there stamping
drawings and interpreting seismic data.
That’s why planners of this year’s Annual Conference
and Annual General Meeting are putting a special emphasis on executive professional
development, through an Executive Track session featuring a top-notch management
consultant.
Michael Canic is a former high-performing executive at FedEx
and an adventure seeker who’s canoed the Amazon and trekked the mountains
of Northern Pakistan. He presents for the afternoon in Edmonton on April 19.
Ruthless Consistency: Aligning Your Organization to Win or
Else is the title of the presentation, and those who attend are in for an excellent
time, says APEGGA Executive Director and Registrar Neil Windsor, P.Eng.
“This is exactly the kind of presentation our CEOs and
other executives have been asking for. I’ve heard Michael Canic, and unlike
many such presenters he kept me spellbound throughout, and made me think about
myself and how I can become a better leader.”
But Mr. Canic’s approach sounds hard line. Is that aggressive
attitude necessary in the booming, resource-bolstered economy of Alberta?
All the more so, Mr. Canic says. In fact focusing on improvement
is particularly difficult when times are good.
“Churchill said, ‘Nothing focuses the mind like
the sight of the gallows.’ In lieu of this, human nature is that we tend
to get comfortable and complacent,” explains Mr. Canic, a principal with
Edge Consulting Services, Inc., which has offices in Vancouver, Denver and Atlanta. “That’s
why continually attacking your assumptions is so critical.”
It was restlessness, not complacency, that led Mr. Canic to
consulting. He’d
already posted an excellent track record after five years at FedEx and could
easily have stayed. The company had won the U.S.-based Malcolm Baldridge National
Quality Award. Now, FedEx wanted to create a culture of continuous quality improvement
throughout the company.
It was Mr. Canic’s job to make that happen in Western Canada. “My
research showed that most companies’ quality efforts failed. Those that
succeeded took more of a systems approach to implementation.
“I adapted this concept to our initiative at FedEx and through the efforts
of a great many people we became the most successful district in the Americas.
But after achieving some notable successes, I wanted more challenge and stimulation.
When that opportunity wasn’t available, I decided to consider other options.
“A colleague on the board of a quality organization was
a management consultant. When he described what he did, I was instantly drawn
to it. I left the safety net of the corporate world and started my own consulting
practice in Vancouver.”
The FedEx experience, however, has stayed with him. “What
I learned about successful implementation is what drives many of my interventions
as a management consultant.”
Today, Mr. Canic is an executive consultant, speaker and writer
at Edge Consulting Services, Inc.
It’s the kind of job that’s in high demand — and for good reason.
The typical executive has had to change dramatically in the last 30 years or
so, and expert help is no longer a luxury.
“The largest difference is that the demands are so much greater today.
Shareholder power, customer demands and employee expectations have all increased.
“Next, the pace is much faster. This is a natural outcome
of many factors, including increased competition, enhanced technology and globalization.
Managers today must be more sophisticated in dealing with people, process, structure
and strategy.”
Management is not for everybody — and that’s something many companies
lose sight of by promoting untrained people, says Mr. Canic.
“I am a strong believer in management pre-training, meaning that prospective
managers must successfully complete a number of steps to become eligible for
consideration.
“Otherwise, we risk taking good people — people who are strong functionally
or tech
ically — and setting them up to fail. They may be high-potential
staff who get thrown to the wolves because we haven’t equipped them with
the people, and the process and organizational skills to succeed.”
But what about those camel rides across deserts and mountain
climbs in the Andes? What do they have to do with success?
“One of the things I value most is being a free thinker,” says Mr.
Canic, a fit and active world traveller and self-described bookaholic. “Travelling
globally and pursuing a broad range of experiences help to facilitate this. It
is amazing how many assumptions society has programmed into us.
“Being on a glacier in northeast Pakistan, huddled under a UN tarp, sharing
stories with a group of Balti porters — it helps break these assumptions
down.”
ANNUAL CONFERENCE AND AGM INFORMATION
What else does APEGGA have to offer at the 2006 Annual Conference and Annual
General Meeting, April 19-22? To register or find out more, download
the supplement in this month’s PEGG or visit www.apegga.org/AC2006/
