My name is Graham Birkenhead and I am a procrastinator. I'm not alone, I'm not even in the minority. It is estimated that 15 to 25% of adults are chronically affected by procrastination, and up to 75% of adults procrastinate on a regular basis. Not only does it mean that you put off doing tasks and activities that need to be done, but the knowled...
Read MoreEach year I mentor a student in the Telfer School of Business at the University of Ottawa. This year the woman I am mentoring has been asked to participate in their Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. A truly noble cause. But… I am reminded of the great experiment underway at the moment to encourage the vaccine hesitant to rethink their opp...
Read MoreThe reason I bring this up is because of a more recent interaction with Bell. My internet stopped working and so I went online to try and resolve it… The first items on their phone tree are all about buying a new phone, a new TV service, faster internet etc… Eventually you get down to repairs and you again click through a long tree only to be put o...
Read MoreWhen I was a child, I had a VERY active imagination (I guess like a lot, if not most children). I had limited exposure to the world, yet that didn't stop me. Every new experience provided opportunities to ask more questions, everything I saw on television (even in black and white) or heard on the radio, or conversation overheard, gave me more inp...
Read MoreUnemployment figures continue to improve; we have a little way to go before we are back to pre-pandemic levels, but we are moving in the right direction. Currently, unemployment in Canada is 7.5% (1.5m) and in the US it is 5.4% (10m). These figures will include people who are ‘looking’ for work; they won’t include the people who could work but f...
Read MoreWhenever the name Thomas Edison is mentioned, people often think about ‘the man that invented the light-bulb’, and most are aware of the many variations of his famous quote about trying to make the lightbulb work: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work”.
Read MoreSuccess in business is a rare thing, in fact 70% of businesses fail within their first 10 years. And that number holds true for all types of business. Of those that don’t fail, only a few really soar. Why am I saying this? Simply to suggest that you be careful when you think about emulating your peers or you may well be joining a pack of lemmings h...
Read MoreTwenty years ago, Salesforce invented the phrase “Software-as-a-Service” or ‘SaaS”. Since then, the growth of this concept has been phenomenal. A few years ago, I was collating Latvian SaaS companies into a single database to facilitate investors. Now, categorizing SaaS enterprises is not a straightforward activity as they fall into so many differe...
Read MoreThere really is nothing quite like a good bowl of soup; warming, nutritious and tasty. The thing about soup is that there is almost an infinite variety of possibilities of what you can make – whether it is using a different combination of ingredients or a slight variation of the same ingredients. Adjustments to the cooking time or temperature, or...
Read MoreImagine you are running your country’s summer Olympics team. You have athletes in almost every discipline – swimming, water polo, skateboarding, volleyball, boxing, rugby, fencing and so on. As head of the team, your mandate is to win medals. In the next Olympics, your athletes will be competing against the best in the world. This is no longer loca...
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