Doug Williamson is a business consultant, former government advisor, and author. Photo: Beacon News.
Will Canadian business leaders rise to the challenge from Doug Williamson?
You know the Steve Jobs quote about the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes? Doug Williamson is that guy.
And he’s on a mission to recruit, create and mentor more Canadian misfits just like him.
I sat down with Williamson at my favourite White Rock coffee shop to interview him about his new book, Straight Talk on Leadership, which I’ll be reviewing in due course. But I wanted to share a few thoughts with Beacon readers about Williamson’s vision that transcend the message of his book.
That vision?
Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of Blackberry, formerly Research In Motion.
Williamson wants Canadian businesses to be great. Not just great here in Canada, but great on the international stage the way Research in Motion/Blackberry was great only a few years ago.
Great the way Jobs and Bill Gates and Jack Welch are great. World class leaders that tower over their global economic competitors like a Colossus.
Which begs the question, why should we care? Canada already has one of the highest standards of living in the world. A recently released list of most liveable places on the planet included three Canadian cities (Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary) in the top 10. We’re a prosperous, peaceful (for the most part) and generous nation that does pretty well for itself.
Why change? Why isn’t good good enough?
Williamson’s thesis is that the world has changed, but Canada hasn’t changed along with it. The science and technology economy, the economy of knowledge, is what creates wealth and jobs these days – and will for the next generation or two.
But Canada’s going in the opposite direction.
Canada has chosen to put more emphasis on energy than on the knowledge economy, according to Doug Williamson.
Ontario, where Williamson hangs his hat, is rapidly de-industrializing and the rest of the country, particularly the West, is ramping up resource development. Canada is devolving, he argues, into the hewers of wood and drawers of water we’ve always been.
And that is a mistake, the easy way out, picking short-term comfort and complacency over the difficult short-term pain required to become great and be more than just comfortable.
Williamson says Canada is engaged in economic warfare and most Canadians don’t even know it.
His book is a call to arms for the business leaders of today and tomorrow – the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes – to change the direction of the Canadian economy. To embrace international markets and become global citizens. To build world class companies in leading science, technology and knowledge industries.
And to become great while we’re doing it.
During our interview, I asked him how he intended to manage a feat that has humbled other Canadian business leaders and politicians, because it’s not like he’s the first to notice that Canada is under-performing on the world stage and has been for decades.
He replied that he has a prescription, not a template, but our best hope is a dialogue of the ambitious. Those people who want their businesses and their country to be great and are willing to put their shoulder to the wheel to make it happen.
This column is an acceptance of that challenge.
Beacon News has a megaphone, small though it may currently be, and if I can put it to good use mobilizing the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, then by all means let’s get after it.
This column is also an invitation to Beacon readers. I don’t know what form Williamson’s dialogue will take. Or even if it will survive his book tour.
But let’s assume for a moment it does. And slowly the dialogue grows across the country and Canadians – particularly Canadian business owners and leaders – become engaged in a national debate about how to engineer a great Canadian economy.
If that happens, then let’s you and I participate. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Stay tuned. I hope to write regularly about Mr. Williamson and his (perhaps Quixotic) quest to transform the country.
I invite your comments and your feedback.