You live on in the hearts and minds of the loving family you left behind – Unknown.
Adam was working with a group of kids to collect bottles and he was doing so well. I started giving rides to the kids in different communities in my 5th Avenue, which was not suitable for that. We decided to trade it for a brand new van with enough capacity to give rides to the kids.
We decided to test the van by driving to New York. We ended up in New Jersey as we didn’t find any reasonable motel in New York. We stayed in a nice motel in New Jersey on the weekend and visited New York on our way back home.
One day I decided to go out and see some employment agencies to find consulting assignments, preferably in a bank. It took several days to register with a few agencies in downtown Toronto. Then I waited for a while, but nobody called me.
I thought that was a waste of time and perhaps I should concentrate upon getting the kind of consulting contracts that I was currently doing. I ended up with another contract to help a small company in the construction business, which was located not too far from where we used to live.
One night when I came home, there was a message on the machine from an agency asking me to give them a call.
The next day when I called them the guy on the phone said can you come to our office this afternoon. One of our clients expressed interest in your background, and I would prefer to talk to you in person rather than discussing this on the phone.
I said I have a couple of meetings this afternoon. How about if around 4:00 PM I pop in to your office see you.
When I got there the guy seemed excited with the prospects of the opportunity. He said our client is the vice-president of one of the five largest US banks. They have several branches in Canada and their Canadian head office is only a couple of blocks from our office here in downtown Toronto.
He said the reason I am so excited about this opportunity, Mir, is that the VP has always had somebody in his office get in touch with us for any consulting requirements. However, in this case, he called directly and wanted to talk to me. He was very interested in your experience with Alberta Treasury Branches (ATB) and he never stopped asking questions about my experience directly dealing with you. I told him that I spoke to Mir only for 20 minutes. He answered every question that I had directly, clearly, and manifestly.
He said, based on the type of questions the VP asked about you, he gave me the impression that he already had spoken to somebody either in his organization or at ATB. You mentioned in your resumé that you had worked a lot with Citibank in New York.
Once I realized that the guy might continue to talk forever, I decided to interrupt him. I said, can I ask you a question.
He said sorry I kept going on and on. Of course you can ask questions.
I said what kind of expertise is the VP looking for on this assignment, and what kind of time frame he is looking at?
The guy said I only know the answer to your first question, which is strategic planning.
I said it’s too bad. I cannot possibly be interested in this assignment as I don’t have any relative experience with strategic planning. I said it appears that I have wasted your time as well as that of the VP.
The guy said. Wow! Please slow down. I never heard that before from anybody who was looking for a job. I asked him – Do you want me to lie to you?
He said no, but why do you think somebody at his level would spend time talking about you if he thought you had nothing to offer him.
I said I can name multiple reasons for that, but let me ask you another question. He said shoot. I said you read dozens of resumés every week. Can you honestly say that when you read my resumé, you thought you could market me for a strategic planning position or assignment?
He said to be totally honest with you, Mir, the answer to your question is “No”. I would never send your resumé anywhere if they were looking for a strategic planner. In my defence, the only reason I sent your resumé to the Citibank was because you had accomplished a lot in a banking environment in Calgary.
He said you mentioned you can name multiple reasons for his interest in your background. Please give me one example.
I said probably he either already hired somebody for that position or had someone lined up in his mind to hire. He is trying to justify his decision by chatting with somebody else. I said, as far as I am concerned, it could be just smoke and mirrors.
He said the question is: where can we go from here, Mir.
I said why don’t you call him and tell him that you met with me to discuss the opportunity. I told you that I don’t want to waste anybody’s time by going for an interview as I don’t have any experience whatsoever in strategic planning.
He thought that was an honest approach. He thanked me for my time and said he had a couple of other places to send my resumé. He would let me know if anything meaningful came out of his conversation with Citibank.
When I got home, Lynda and Adam already had their supper. I wasn’t very hungry. Lynda wanted to know why I was so late. Once Adam went to bed, I explained to her about my meeting downtown. Lynda said what a waste of time.
The next day was a busy day for me as I had things lined up to do with one of my clients.
When I got home late, Lynda said that guy from the agency had called three times. She told him that she had no idea when I would get home.
In any event, he asked me to tell you that he needs to speak with you ASAP.
I thought it was too late to try him but Lynda suggested why don’t you call him and leave a message that you will speak with him tomorrow morning.
When I rang his number planning to leave a message, he answered the phone. I said what are you doing in the office this late? He said I was hoping that you would give me a call.
I said what’s up. He said I need to talk to you about Citibank. I said how can I be of any help. He said I spoke with the VP and he was kind of upset with your response. He said he never had anybody who declined an opportunity to meet and discuss the prospects of an assignment. I tried to explain to him that Mir was trying to be honest with us and he didn’t want to waste your time.
At any rate, he said, he asked the VP why he thought Mir was the right person to talk to when he doesn’t have any experience in strategic planning.
He said I didn’t want somebody to sit in an office and come up with a plan which is not based on real experience. He said I already have people like that in my office and they are quite capable of drafting a strategic plan. However, Mir worked in a Canadian banking system, which these folks lack. He was directly responsible for the cheque processing for his bank. He knows what it takes to deal with the Bank of Canada when it comes to making settlement with it. He served on the National Clearing Committee for three years, working with all other major banks. Perhaps most importantly, I understood he was responsible for initiating and completing the process to change their “US Funds Process” in their branches. He also said Mir was the one who visited our New York office more than once with his Executive Vice President to negotiate and finalize the deal with Citibank. It was a major thing for Citibank.
I said I am sorry to interrupt you. I am flattered with his comments but the fact remains that all the things I did for ATB were purely operational. They had nothing to do with strategic planning.
I said I will make a deal with you. Please tell the VP that I need a week to think about this as I am in the middle of doing something for one of my clients. That is more important to me than investing my time in exploring new opportunities. If he agrees, please make an appointment for me to see him a week from today, and I will spend an hour with him.
Next day I had a telephone call from the agency, confirming that the VP would wait for a week to see me on Thursday at 10:00 AM in his office.
I knew that I had an appointment with Citibank soon, but I wasn’t convinced that anything meaningful was going to come out of that meeting.
I believed that there’s always a reason for things that happen to us. Conversely, I kept wondering about what the reason could be. After having such a high profile job with ATB in Alberta, I ended up in Ontario doing all kinds of relatively small things I wasn’t trained for. I had an entirely different perception of a consulting practice than what I ended up doing. Nevertheless, I was grateful that I was still able to make a living.
I was doing my assignments promptly and my advisor was relatively happy with my work. The last time I spoke to him on the phone, he said your next assignment will be your thesis. I said I cannot wait.
Adam was in a different school in Markham, doing grade 9. There was no bus to the school. Hence Lynda ended up driving him. Sometimes he would take a bus to come home. Weekends and evenings he was selling newspaper subscriptions to make some money. I remember once on the weekend when we were lining up in McDonald’s, a woman came to us and said is he your son?
I said what did he do? She said he’s a fast salesman. One day he came to sell us a newspaper subscription and we had some friends visiting us who also live in the neighbourhood. He not only sold the subscription to us but he sold subscriptions to all our friends. She said you should be proud of him.
Lynda and I said we are proud of him, but we didn’t know that he was that good.
Lynda was busy with her work. She hated the paperwork, but being the department head she had no choice. Lynda was a people person. She had excellent marketing skills to sell anything to anybody, anytime.
Lynda asked me if I had decided to keep the appointment with Citibank. I said I am struggling with the idea. I am not sure if I can afford to spend time talking about skills that I don’t have. But I am interested to know what you think I should do?
She said going by what you told me about the requirements for the assignment and your hesitation about not having any direct experience with strategic planning, it could be only a “song and dance”. But what do you have to lose. You don’t need to do any preparation for the interview. We are talking about a maximum of four hours of your time and I think you should go for it.
I said you are right. My problem is that I have interviewed several people for consulting assignments in the bank, but I never have been interviewed for any consulting assignments in a bank.
She said listen to me carefully. I believe in you. As far as I am concerned you are an “Honest Broker”. You will never try to sell yourself, your skills or experience that you don’t have. You have nothing to worry about. Just go there and be yourself. The good news is that you are not desperate for work. You already have a couple of contracts.
I said WOW! You definitely know how to give a pep talk. You made me feel more courageous and enthusiastic about the interview, my darling. I am definitely going for the interview as scheduled.
I got to Citibank and was escorted to the office of the VP, where he was waiting for me. We shook hands. He offered me a chair across from his huge desk, which was totally loaded with all kinds of documents in no obvious order.
He asked if I had any difficulty finding his office. I was about to say something when his phone rang. He said I am sorry Mir, I need to take this.
He spoke to somebody for almost 4 minutes before he hung up. He said please call me Ron. I am the VP for Strategic Planning for our Canadian Operations. By the way, he said, I was completely impressed with your experience in the Canadian Banking System. You accomplished tons of things in such a short period of time with ATB.
Before he continued talking, his phone rang again. He kept talking on the phone for more than 5 minutes. Then he apologized to me again.
He just started saying that he was very much interested about learning why I thought the US Fund system in the ATB branches needed to be changed, when they had been using it for decades,. I was about to say something; his phone rang again.
He looked at me and said sorry I need to take this call.
Once he finished talking on the phone, I got up and said I am sorry, Ron. You’re indeed a busy man. Perhaps I can come back when you don’t have to answer so many calls in the middle of an interview. I raised my hand to shake his.
He said he was sorry for being thoughtless. I totally agree with you; we need privacy to continue our conversation. I don’t want to wait another week to meet with you, Mir. How about this if I told my secretary to hold my calls and we relocate to a meeting room without any phone. Would that be acceptable to you? I said I cannot ask for more.
We went to a meeting room. He asked his secretary to bring coffee for both of us.
Ron said he was astounded that you were an IT guy and had no jurisdiction whatsoever in the organization to interfere with branch operations. He continued, if he tried to do that in his organization, believe me, they would tell him exactly where to go.
I said you are correct. I had no jurisdiction or authority to do what I did. Nonetheless, once we completed making the necessary technological changes in the branches, I spoke to the senior Vice-President who had overall responsibilities for the banking operations. My pitch was the technologies that we had implemented in the branches could only help us so much. I explained to him that we needed to be prepared to make some operational changes by looking at the tools and techniques we followed to conduct our business. Once we had done that we needed to ask ourselves:
- Why are we doing what we have been doing to conduct our business; and
- Is there a better way of doing the same things by allowing technology to maximize the benefits in the interest of efficiency as well as effectiveness?
Ron said, WOW! How could you have access to the decision makers and have them go out of their way to listen to you?
I said partly because ATB is a relatively small organization to start with, and partly because I had spent almost three years proving myself with their Cheque Processing environments. There I had helped eliminate the “holdover”.
Ron said what is the holdover?
The holdover is the number of cheques which don’t get processed and posted to individual accounts during the night. Before I joined the organization, ATB didn’t have adequate cheque processing capabilities to capture every single cheque and post it to the individual accounts.
Ron said what does that really mean, Mir?
I said it meant that ATB had to fund those unprocessed cheques which also meant that it cost them interest for one day.
Ron said WOW! So what did you do to help them?
I said I replaced the old Cheque Processing machines with new machines to make sure that every single cheque was processed and posted on the same night. That saved a bundle for ATB.
Ron said now I understand why an executive might pay attention to what you said, Mir.
To be honest with you, I had no clue about the banking environment and I had made that clear when I was hired by my boss Gerry. What really helped me was that Gerry was an extraordinarily intelligent banker. He had no technical background. He had been hired from the Royal Bank of Canada. But he knew exactly how to “use” me.
He told me the major reason I want you to come and work with us is that you don’t have any banking experience. You will see things we bankers are not able to see. Furthermore, you don’t appear to be a guy who knows how to keep things you see quiet, which may generate some interest in making changes.
Sorry Ron, it was a long answer to your short question but I needed to explain it to you in my own words.
Ron said I really appreciated the details, Mir.
Ron said would you mind if I asked you another question on the same subject.
I said shoot.
Ron said just explain to me how you managed to get that contract awarded to Citibank when all the other chartered Canadian banks were after it.
I said it wasn’t really as tough as I thought.
I said I don’t know how much you know about the Canadian banking system.
Ron said just assume that I know nothing about the Canadian banking system, Mir.
I said ATB is not a chartered bank, therefore, ATB needed to be represented by a chartered bank to deal with the Bank of Canada. In other words, when every chartered bank gets together around 6:00 in the morning in the basement of the Bank of Canada to settle their accounts with each other, all non-chartered banks have to be represented by those chartered banks.
Ron said, I didn’t know that but what’s your point.
My point was that at the time I was hired, ATB had been represented by a particular chartered bank for decades. ATB was obligated to do business with them for their US Funds accounts.
The irony was that if an ATB customer wanted to send $100 to somebody in Hong Kong, the person in Hong Kong would have to wait for 10 to 12 days to get their money, whereas it takes only a day or 2 for Citibank to make those funds available in Hong Kong. Furthermore, we managed to negotiate a higher rate of sharing the money which is made on non-claimed funds with Citibank.
Ron said. Please explain to me; I don’t understand.
I said let’s say $1,000 was sent to Hong Kong and it took 10 days for the folks to claim the money. The money made in interest on that amount for 10 days had to be shared with ATB. The percentage we negotiated with Citibank was 50 percent whereas previously ATB used to get only 25 percent.
Ron said do you have any plans for lunch. I said no.
Ron said do you mind if I get my secretary to bring some sandwiches and drinks as I have millions of questions to ask.
When Ron came back after talking to his secretary, he brought coffee for both of us and asked me to take my jacket off and relax.
I had been trying to keep my tone fresh, appealing and casual to answer Ron’s questions, but I asked him: How come a guy with the responsibilities of strategic planning like him is interested in learning about operational aspects of a Canadian banking system?
He said I thought you must be wondering about that.
He said I don’t believe that we can sit in a room, ignoring what’s going on in the field, trying to put together something unrealistic and call it a strategic plan.
I said I agree with you. At the same time I need to tell you Ron that I have zero experience with writing a strategic plan for any organization.
He said I don’t care about that Mir. What I am trying to assess is your ability to help us with the tons of practical experience you have in the Canadian banking system. I believe that our objectives included in the plan have to be realistic. You will be an excellent source for the reality check.
His secretary knocked on the door and brought our lunch and set it up for us on the table.
Ron said let’s eat our lunch while talking.
I said let me use the washroom first. He came out from the room and pointed me in the direction of the washroom.
If I remember correctly, we spent another 35 to 40 minutes talking about what else I did at ATB.
He was a great listener.
Finally Ron said he had four folks in the section responsible for drafting a strategic plan. He said in his opinion none of them were capable of doing that. Hence he was looking for somebody to work with them and help them understand the process without making them feel stupid.
He said I know you’re an honest man and I appreciated that quality when your agent called and explained why you didn’t like to waste my time by coming for an interview. I know you repeatedly told me that you never drafted a strategic plan for any organization which is also a very frank statement. Nevertheless, I need to ask you this question before I let you go.
I said shoot.
Ron said whether or not you had any practical experience with strategic planning, if I asked you to draft a strategic plan for my organization, what you would consider doing. Just humor me.
I said that’s an interesting question, Ron. Here it is:
- I would definitely start with the development of a Vision Statement for the organization. I would validate it with a selected group of folks from your user community;
- Once that statement’s validated and accepted, I would work with your user community to develop and validate a Mission Statement to support the Vision Statement;
- The next thing I would do is develop detailed Goals and Objectives to accomplish the Mission Statement; and
- Probably the most important aspect of this process is to develop the Action Plan to accomplish each goal and objective.
I said before I continue, I need to ask if you understand “SWOT ANALYSIS”?
He said the answer is “No”.
I said some people don’t include SWOT ANALYSIS as a part of the strategic plan but I believe that it must be a critical part of the process.
Ron said what does it involve, Mir.
I said it deals with the following in detail:
- Strengths;
- Weaknesses;
- Opportunities; and
- Threat.
He said just explain to me why this is a core part of the process.
I said it requires total participation of your user community to define those components. That would also reflect the total commitment of your user community to the process.
Ron said. It’s good enough for me. I tell you what: you may have never drafted any strategic plan for an organization, but I have total confidence in your ability to do so for my organization. He said I also feel that I can learn so much working with you, Mir.
I said I am totally flattered, Ron.
He said, just be honest with me, please. If I offered you that assignment right now, would you accept it?
I said I would, but only if you promised me to protect the initiative from meaningless interference for political interests.
Ron got up and shook hands and said you got it, my friend. How does starting on Monday sound to you. I said I need a week to get things sorted out, Ron. He said I will see you next Monday, and I left his office.
I knew that Lynda was working till 6:00 PM that day and it was only 3:00 PM when I got to her store. I just popped in to see her for a minute or two. She was talking to a couple of girls who used to work for her. As soon as she saw me, she told them that she’s taking a coffee break, and we walked together to their cafeteria. We selected a table in the back and as soon as we sat down, she said how did it go?
I said we got the contract. She said WOW! I thought she was totally emotional and attempting to control her tears. I waited for her to control herself and ordered a couple of coffees for us.
Once she sipped her coffee, she said did you like the guy?
I said he seemed to be alright.
She said does he know what he’s doing?
I said he was recently promoted to the position of VP, Strategic Planning. While he doesn’t know much about strategic planning, he seemed to be open to let me do what I thought they needed.
She said I am so happy that you got back to the kind of consulting you like to do and I am totally confident that you will do a good job for Citibank.
She said what are you going to do about the current contracts you are working with?
I said I need to figure it out. That’s why I said I need a week to join Citibank.
She said do you know the period of the contact?
I have no idea.
I said how about we three of us go out tonight to celebrate our new contract. She said pick me up around 6:00 and we’ll go out for a nice meal.
When I got home, there was a message on the machine from the agency.
When I called him back, the guy said what did you do to Ron, Mir?
I said what happened?
He said he called me as soon as you left his office and never stopped telling me how wonderful you were.
I said don’t believe everything he said. He laughed and said in any case, you got the contract.
I asked him for how long? He said Ron left it as an open-ended contract. I guess he doesn’t know how long it would take for you to finalize the strategic plan, which made sense.
