The underdog is the “one who is not supposed to win“.

How many times have we seen the “little guy’ overcome the odds to win … just like Rocky Balboa winning his title fight in the movie (several movies actually).

How do you react when you are the underdog?  The one not supposed to get the promotion.  The one not supposed to win the contract.  The one not supposed to come away with the prize.

You can use the position to your advantage and overachieve.

You can choose to be motivated by the relative positioning … using it to fire up your competitive streak.

You can determine to show them … because after all “Its not the size of the man in the fight, its the size of the fight in the man“!

OR …

You can use it as an excuse … “we tried, but we knew we weren’t going to win”!

You can “roll over” and accept the inevitable.

You can “give it a college try”!

Kevin’s thoughts …

1.  If you don’t think you are going to win … you are not going to win.

2.  If you are going to play then play to win!

3.  It doesn’t really matter what others think, it is what you think that counts.

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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Accountable people make commitments … and then meet them.

You can depend on people who are accountable.

Accountable people don’t make excuses.

Accountable people don’t throw their arms in the air in defeat … they find a way.

Accountable people don’t need anyone to tell them what they need to do.

If you want to be a professional athlete or the best in any field,  you make a serious commitment and it is all up to you to reach your dream.

When you get two teams of accountable people facing off against each other in any sports environment you have something people pay to watch.

I can tell you that climbing in a boxing ring requires a level of commitment, to reach the dizzy heights of a Muhammed Ali requires serious accountability!

When you have people who are driven to meet and exceed their goals you have potential winners … and those are people you want on your team!

So … ask yourself some questions.

Are you one of those accountable people around which organizations can build?

If not, then what are you going to do about that?

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” … Muhammed Ali

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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Voltaire suggested that “Common sense is not so common.”

Certainly it is a trait that is valued by employers … sometimes even more than intelligence (EQ versus IQ?)

“Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.”  ―    Harriet Beecher Stowe

Some thoughts on common sense …

1.  I believe that the more experience you have the more “common” the sense becomes.

2.  Common sense is often demonstrated through sound decision making.

3.  You cannot make good decisions if you are not TRULY engaging your brain … doing what you have always done, taking others opinions at face value and making a decision while your mind is somewhere else are all common flaws, leading to a lack of common sense in the decision.

4.  People we consider to have good common sense are often described as dependable … that is not a bad thing.

5.  Sometimes making the uncommon decision is what brings creativity … BUT you need the common sense to know when that is appropriate.

6.  Some people understand what the common sense answer is but choose very consciously to make bad decisions … but the outcome is the same.  So … exercising common sense would seem to be the desirable outcome.

I don’t think there are magic bullets … we learn common sense through our life’s experiences, from birth to today.  Every day we all see situations that cause us to shake our heads, wondering, “What were they thinking?”  It appears that people either have it or they don’t, some people who have it don’t exercise it and I think most people believe they have it … but the jury is out!

Sometimes the result of poor common sense is not a big deal … and sometimes it can be life or death, relationship or no relationship, job or no job.

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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It is human nature to gravitate towards people that we like, and that like us.  In our personal lives that is our choice … although I will make the comment that you should never make assumptions because some of the strongest relationships are born out of adversity!

If you are a salesperson it is your job to service your clients … whether you personally like them or not.

It is your job to pursue new clients, whether they appear to “approachable” or not.

It is your job to represent your company professionally and treat all of those clients and prospects with the respect they deserve.

Here are some indicators that maybe you are missing the boat …

1.  You find your self meeting with a few people very frequently … and they might not be your top prospects.

2.  There are some clients that you treat better than others … and it has nothing to do with their spend.

3.  You find yourself avoiding contacting certain clients … for no good business reasons.

4.  The people you spend the most time with are just like you!

5.   You don’t look for new client contacts outside of your comfort zone.

I understand that when we have strong relationships with clients it can lead to business.  I also understand that there are a lot of clients that don’t want to be friends with their supplier, they just want good service at a fair price!  You MUST have a reasonable relationship with ALL of your clients … regardless!

Another thing to consider is that as we mature it is possible to broaden our horizons, and to develop other interests.  People whose company we might not have sought a few years back suddenly become much more interesting to us and vice versa.  So that client you don’t like too much today might actually be your best friend a few years from now.

Finally, it might be that you don’t particularly like a client because of some conflict … yet very often, if you handle the conflict well, these clients can become big supporters.

The bottom line …

These are clients of your company … and they ALL need to be serviced accordingly.

If you are not treating ALL of your clients with an appropriate amount of care then someone else surely will!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry for April 2013. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of April in previous years …

Five years ago in April 2008 STMicroelectronics and NXP merged to create a $3 Billion chip company.  IBM was busy, making three smaller acquisitions this month Diligent, FilesX and InfoDyne; Yahoo bought Tensa Kft. Despite the attentions of Microsoft; and speaking of Microsoft they had a couple of acquisitions Farecast and Komoku;  EMC also had a couple of forays into the M&A market with Iomega and Conchango plc.  In April 2009 Oracle entered the hardware business with its $7.4 Billion purchase of Sun!  EBay paid $1.2 billion for Gmarket (a Korean EBay), Harris Corp paid $675 million for Tyco Electronic wireless division and Tech Mahindra paid $422 million for Satyam.  In April 2010 HP paid $1.2 Billion in the somewhat surprising purchase of Palm; Twitter bought a couple of companies, Cloudhopper and Atebits.  Symantec also bought a couple of companies (PGP ($300 Million) and GuardianEdge ($70 Million).  Oracle paid $685 Million for Phase Forward, Juniper paid about $100 Million for Ankeena Networks and Salesforce bought Jigsaw for $142 Million.  Two years ago in April 2011 Texas Instruments bought National Semiconductor for $6.5 billion, Level 3 Communications paid $3 Billion for Global Crossing, Lawson Software was sold for $2 Billion to GGC Software Holdings (an Infor company) and Seagate bought the hard disk drive operations of Samsung to become one of the two largest players in that space.  Last year in April 2012 Facebook made a $1 billion bid for Instagram, Facebook also bought a piece of the patent action from Microsoft after Microsoft had paid AOL more than $1 billion for the patents.  DELL made three acquisitions this month, Wyse technology, Clerity Solutions and Make Technologies.  IBM picked up Toronto based BI company Varicent Software; Intel paid $140 million for some assets from Cray; Citrix picked up Podio; and Twitter bought a startup to acquire its team of developers.

Which brings us back to the present …

April 2013 saw some interesting M&A activity with Rogers paying $200 million for Primus’s Blackiron subsidiary, including datacenter capability; Toronto based Softchoice also chose to go private in a $412 million private equity deal; Shaw paid $225 million for an Enmax fibre network subsidiary in Calgary; Best Buy sold its stake in Carphone Warehouse for $775 million (having paid $2.1 billion in 2008).  Google has spent $291 million on acquisitions in the first quarter including a $30 million purchase of social company Wavii.  Oter big names on the acquisition trail this month include Intel (Mashery), IBM (Urbancode); Computer Associates (Nolio).  Finally Facebook had a couple of small acquisitions Osmeta and Parse.

In other news this month Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program received some bad press and subsequent changes, Ray Lane stepped down from HP’s board and IBM is investing $1 billion in flash data technology.  PC shipments were down more than 11% year over year, smartphones however are up 30% with Samsung enjoying good growth.  China was identified as the number one source of malicious computer attacks with the US second.

The economic indicators were mixed, with confidence up in Canada despite an increase in the unemployment rate and lost jobs.  There were a number of positive indicators out of the US including increases in jobs, GDP, CEO confidence and the leading economic index.  E&Y also suggested 90% of US executives viewed the global economy as improved or stable.

That is it for my look at what was happening in the technology space over the last month, compared to the same month in previous years.  I’ll be back at the end of May, until then … walk fast and smile!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?  Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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The concept of having “fresh eyes” review a proposal addresses the concern that the person who did the writing will find it hard to spot their own mistakes, or even to criticise their own work.

The same concept applies to business planning … if you and your management team have been driving the same business for some period of time how do you bring new ideas to the strategy?  One way is “fresh eyes”.

If you have been in the same role for some period of time how do you “change things up”?  What can you do to look at new creative ways to improve productivity or increase sales or take your performance to the next level?  One way is definitely “fresh eyes”.

If you look at the average tenure of CEOs in public companies you will see that they typically turn over every eight to ten years.  Bringing in ”fresh eyes” at the top is definitely a way for companies to keep innovating.

Do you make good use of fresh eyes?

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?  Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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As a business owner you are continually dealing with issues as you focus on the growth of your business.  It is critically important that those issues be dealt with in a manner that is consistent and yet commensurate with the circumstances.

For example if an employee were to do something wrong, the right thing to do is to understand the circumstances, assess the right course of action and make a decision.  Depending upon the circumstance it might mean involving a few people in that decision process, but the goal would be to make a decision quickly.

The situation might have cost the company business, might have caused other people to be inconvenienced or any number of serious impacts.

The last thing you need to do is to over react.

I ask myself a few key questions:

1.  Was there malicious intent?

2.  Is this a systemic problem or a one-off event?

3.  Is it an honest mistake (and I remind myself that I have made a few myself)?

4.  Is the event itself and the ensuing aftermath sufficient lesson to ensure it is unlikely to happen again?

5.  Is there a lesson in here for a wider audience that needs to be developed?

6.  What would I expect if I made that mistake?

If the situation is tense and time allows, then I might want to sleep on it.

From the answers to these questions I can determine an appropriate course of action.

There should be no vindictiveness.

Some examples of Over Reaction:

1.  A company fired its proposal writer because an error in a response caused them to miss out on a large piece of work.

Really?  There should be no one person at blame, what about the sales person, the QA, the manager … the blame game is not a good thing.

2.  A school bans schoolyard football because a student got injured.

Really?  Need I say more?

3.  A company changed their dress code policy because too many people were abusing casual Fridays.

Really?  Deal with the problem.  Re-educate the staff about your expectations, and remove privileges from offenders, not everybody.

4.  The government brings in new legislation affecting an industry because of misuse of a program.

Really?  Go after those who misuse the program, NOT the whole industry.

Deal with issues in a consistent and professional manner. 

Do not let emotion into decisions. 

Do not play politics on the back of a few.

Always strive to do the right thing!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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The world is filled with ideas … but ideas without action are meaningless.

I have heard the phrase “I could have done that” many times … but they didn’t!

There are plenty of people who will be quick to tell you what you did wrong … of course most of them did nothing.

You will get advice from people that have read books, been educated in a subject or who just think they know the answers … but these are people who will not actually put into practice those recommendations.

It is impressive how compelling an “expert” can be with their opinion … but is it based on experience or theory?

If you need advice, find someone who has “walked in those shoes”.

If you are willing to actually take action then you are already passing the talkers!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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If you are a footballer (soccer player) you will have heard your coach shout this many times … keep your eye on the ball!  It is a particularly disconcerting phrase because that same coach might, not 5 minutes later, accuse you of “ball watching” … which is NOT a good thing!

What does it all mean?

1.  Keep your eye on the ball.  In soccer you will strike the ball most effectively if you watch the ball as you hit it ( not unlike that ”other” game, golf).  If you let your eyes drift off to the goal, a natural tendency, then you are likely to not hit the ball as crisply as you should, and it may end up going in a different direction than you intend.

2.  Ball watching.  While engaged in a match your job is to take in all of the action, be alert to the movement of the opposing players as well as be aware of where your own teammates are.  There can be a tendency to lose focus on the big picture when you focus on the ball alone … this generally happens when something exciting is happening, a near goal etc.  The problem is that your opponent may well end up unmarked with space to cause some damage!

Lessons for business people.

1.  When executing on a plan you need to “keep your eye on the ball“.  The day to day activities that you complete towards your plan (the tasks) are what will lead to success.  It is easy to be distracted by other “options”, “opportunities” or “distractions”.  Success comes to those who execute best!  Focus, focus, focus!

2.  Periodically you need to take a more strategic look at what you are doing.  You do this by stepping back from the “tasks” and reevaluating your plan based on new conditions.  You can make sure the plan is still relevant and make corrections as required.  Once you are comfortable with the plan it is back to action!  If you are “ball watching” you might just miss out on opportunities, allow your competitors some advantage or miss out on changing market conditions!

Kevin’s take away:

Clearly those footballers are smart people!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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Very often in life you will find yourself talking to someone, they are paying attention to what you are saying, BUT they are hearing a slightly different message than the one you are delivering.

I think that one of the biggest difference between a “seasoned professional”, in almost any field, and a “newbie” is their understanding of the nuances in their profession.

I operate in the staffing world, where the key roles for our business are sales and recruiting.  Both of which involve significant people interaction and both of which require an ability to grasp the importance of the nuances in our business.

For example … regular contact with our clients is extremely important.  However if I am a client and the only time I hear from a salesperson is when they are asking me for business I might not be as welcoming as when some percentage of the time they are bringing value in other ways.  So a salesperson might differentiate them self by the small things … a thoughtful message; forwarding interesting articles of interest; a call out of the blue for a beer/a lunch/a coffee; etc.

Another example might be the recruiter who ignores the calls from people wanting to hear about a job, or get feedback on an interview.  You can be successful in the short term, but if you have a reputation fro treating people poorly it will catch up with you.

In almost any profession if I do not value the significant difference between an email, a telephone conversation and a face to face conversation then I am missing out.  Having a face to face with a colleague, employee, client etc will always be appreciated over the email!

Some more examples we all see regularly …

There is a difference between a server in a restaurant who serves all of their clients efficiently, and one who does the same with a smile and a kind word.

There is a difference between the professional who provides you efficient service, and the one who takes time out to know you a little, while also providing good service.

There is a difference between the teacher that teaches a curriculum, and one that recognises those students that might need a little extra help.

Almost every job offers the opportunity to differentiate based on a very small shift in empathy, focus or just plain friendliness.

Do you understand the nuances that could help you in your field?

Probably even more importantly … do you care enough to want to understand those nuances?

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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