May 2017 – Sep 2024 · 7 yrs 4 mos · Greater Ottawa Metropolitan Area

• I attended a lot of meetings about meetings. Wrote decks that became other decks. Managed a team of brilliant people who were slowly losing their will to live, and I wasn't far behind them.
• Mastered the art of the carefully worded email. Learned that "let's take this offline" means never. Discovered that no matter how good your results were, your performance review was already written before December.
• The goal posts moved every quarter. The pizza parties did not.
• At some point, somewhere between the 400th re-written briefing note and the 3rd town hall that could've been an email, I started building something on the side. Quietly. At night. While wearing their badge during the day.
• By the time I left, that "something on the side" was doing over $1M a year.
• If you're reading this and nodding slowly… you already know it's time.
• The pension will not save you. The title will not save you. Learning how to generate income on your own terms will.
• That's what I teach now.

Jan 2016 – May 2017 · 1 yr 4 mos

• "Synergy Savings" is corporate for: we bought your company, promised everyone would be safe, and then fired everyone.
• McKinsey flew in. Someone opened a spreadsheet. Sorted employees by salary, highest to lowest. Started firing from the top down.
• Turns out the most experienced people are also the most expensive. Who knew.
• I survived by making a promise on a massive project and actually delivering it. Got a title that didn't really exist: Global Lead of Synergy Savings.
• Fancy way of saying I had enough runway to find another job.
• I did. Canada Post.
• In hindsight, the spreadsheet would have been kinder.

Jan 2015 – Mar 2016 · 1 yr 2 mos

• I worked for one of the best leaders I've ever had. He got canned. He delivered everything he promised, built a great team, and transformed how the operation ran.
• His reward? A layoff.
• The global e-Sourcing project was mine to lead. The idea was simple: use data to force fair supplier decisions. Remove the backroom deals. Remove the favoritism. Let the numbers decide.
• Turns out, most people in corporate don't want fair decisions. They want their decisions, dressed up as fair ones.
• Nobody wanted the project. Nobody used the outputs. It was dead on arrival and everyone knew it except the people who approved it.
• It was a placeholder. A well-titled, well-budgeted placeholder.
• Are you in one right now?

Aug 2012 – Jan 2014 · 1 yr 5 mos

• I got this job with zero procurement experience.
• Not a little experience. Zero.
• I got it because I interview well and most procurement professionals have the personality of a cactus. That's not an insult. That's just what happens when you spend years negotiating contracts in a windowless office.
• I was warm, I was curious, I asked good questions. They hired me on the spot.
• What followed was 15 years of discovering that no real hardcore skill is required to move up in corporate. You just need to say the right things to the right people. Show up to the right meetings. Nod confidently at the right moments.
• That's it. That's the cheat code.
• The people who actually knew the most were routinely passed over by the people who sounded like they did.
• I learned to navigate people before I learned the job. Turns out that was the job.
• If you've figured this out and it bothers you, that feeling is trying to tell you something.

Oct 2007 – Aug 2012 · 4 yrs 10 mos

• The company changed names four times. Anxiety much? Every name change accompanied by proving my worth
• Detroit Diesel became Mercedes became MTU became Rolls-Royce. Different logos, same anxiety. Every acquisition brought a new org chart and the same unspoken question: who's getting cut this time?
• My entire livelihood ran on diesel engines being mandated into extinction. ESG targets. Carbon rules. Climate activists. Indigenous consultations. The industry I built my career in was being legislated out of existence by people who had never been inside a generator room.
• Every new emissions regulation was a countdown clock. Every merger was a coin flip.
• I was good at the job. I was also one policy decision away from being irrelevant.
• That feeling never goes away when your income lives inside someone else's industry, someone else's company, and someone else's agenda.
• Eventually I stopped trying to outrun the instability.
• I built my own instead.

Jan 2003 – Jan 2007 · 4 yrs

• I watched an entire department get axed on a Tuesday. The survivors were told to train us and keep quiet about it if they wanted their severance. They smiled through gritted teeth and showed us their accounts.
• The union vs management dynamic wasn't tension. It was actual hatred. Two species that evolved in the same building and never stopped being at war.
• My daughter was born. She almost didn't make it. Three days later my manager called to ask if I could come back. My numbers were suffering.
• No pressure.
• The office gossip spent years collecting dirt on colleagues. Got promoted to Director. Fired all his "enemies"
• He'd been planning it the whole time.
• Loyalty in corporate is situational. The institution protects itself before it protects you.
• Are you still betting on it protecting you?