Editorial Rebuttal

I read this editorial this morning in the Mount Allison University student newspaper and felt compelled to write a rebuttal: http://www.argosy.ca/view.php?aid=41958

my rebuttal is as such:

"I came across the editorial on Project Hero and felt that I should address it. I first want to say that I know Kevin Reed personally and know his intentions for Project Hero to be completely honourable, which I think that the writer recognizes also when he states that the project is “commendable for providing a free education to children who have lost a parent”. While I think that the writer is addressing a valid issue of ‘why not scholarships for other children of parents that have died in service to country or community?’, I think that he has drawn an unfortunate conclusion that Project Hero represents a “dangerous trend in global affairs” and “more than being a worrying sign of the times, “Project Hero” is exemplary of precisely the kind of thinking that is informing these military conflicts”. These conclusions I must dispute. Project Hero is not by design or accident representative of what is wrong with this world, to paraphrase the author. Project Hero is one Canadian’s personal mission to ensure that the children of soldiers, sailors and airmen/women killed in combat are not disadvantaged to a greater extent than other Canadians by their parent’s sacrifice in the service of Canada. Perhaps the title “Hero” is too broad a blanket to cover every military person killed in combat, however, to not accord the title to the ones who unambiguously deserve it is a much greater disservice than to give cover to the few who don’t. At the end of the day let’s remember that Project Hero is an ambitious goal conceived by a university chancellor and furthered by a businessperson to ensure that the children of service personnel killed in combat are not disadvantaged by not only losing a parent but also financial hardship. Allan Rock, former cabinet minister, former ambassador to the U.N., and current president of the University of Ottawa, illustrates the need for a Project Hero, he has stated publicly that if his father, a WWII vet, a peacekeeper in the Middle East, and member of the Canadian Forces for 26 years had been killed in service, he would not have been able to afford to go to university. Would Canada not have been disadvantaged by the loss of Rock’s talents on the national and international stage? I hope that the writer can now see that Project Hero is neither jingoism nor an unfair advantage for the children of service personnel killed in combat; but the rectification of a long-time wrong."

I hope that they publish my rebuttal because I hate the idea that such a worthy initiative can somehow be turned into a symbol for what is wrong in the world.

Lead to Win

Lead to Win was nothing like I thought it would be, and at the same time better than I thought it would be. It was not advice at all, but a crash course in segmenting markets, identifying target customers, crafting customer value propositions, and a whole lot of other business crap that you don't care to read about. I'll give you the upshot, civiside is refocused and clear on the road ahead. We connect young Reservists graduating from post-secondary with companies that offer Management Training Programs. Right now that is where we can offer the most clear cut value proposition to employers and Reservists.

On a related note, I received word today that civiside is moving into phase 3 of Lead to Win (40% of the last phase's participants won't). This will mean even heavier instruction, constructive criticism, and operational focus, but that is exactly what I need to get to the next level, so I am ready and willing.

Exciting times!

Advice

I just read my last post and realized that I hadn't announced the other big news that I was hinting at...well here it is, I have relocated to Ottawa. Ostensibly it was to take a job, which is true and has been great, but in my heart I have believed for at least a year that I needed to come to Ottawa to make the connections I needed to move the civiside ball further down the field. So how has it been? In short, great! I have made some excellent connections in the startup community and even been accepted into an intensive business development program called Lead to Win (which I should be currently resting for since it starts tomorrow, but I am not resting for since my mind is heavy).

The reason my mind is so heavy is that I met with, and received advice from, an entrepreneur tonight who sold his company for nearly a billion dollars. He is now an Angel Investor so I was hoping to gain some ideas on how to create a compelling investment proposal so that I can raise some money to bring on additional expertise. However, what really happened was that I received advice on how to sell civiside to employers, how the business model should operate, and even how civiside the website should operate. What I realized is that alot of the advice I was receiving from him was directly contradicting earlier advice I had received from other successful entrepreneurs. Now I could evaluate the advice on a hierarchy and establish the billion dollar entrepreneur's advice as more valuable and reset my thinking...but somehow I don't think that it works that way. I have come across this contradictory advice conundrum before and tried to defer to the most recent advice and found it to be less than successful. I think that the problem with people giving advice is that it usually comes from personal experience and success...and half of success is luck. What people attribute their experience, and therefore advice, could come from skill, but probably comes from at least 50% luck...a non-reproducible variable.

This is not to say that the billion dollar entrepreneur didn't say some things with a great deal of value, his ideas on increasing the credibility of our candidates and sales techniques to employers have definitely impacted my thinking, but I would say in more of an incremental manner. More like a strategy for rushing than a well defined and executed play. Nevertheless, I am grateful for what I have learned.

So why is my mind heavy? I guess it's heavy because I am realizing that I can't rely on advice to move the ball down field. It's going to take some strategy, some skill and a lot of brute force. I have to increase my luck component by doing more and reducing my reliance on the advice of others. This is again contradictory to what I have learned in the military, "learn from the experience of others", or maybe it's not? Maybe learning from the experience of others is not following what they say led to their success, maybe it's observing what they did with as much objectivity as possible to ascertain potential patterns. Of course, to identify patterns you usually have to observe more than one situation, and often more than one person, so maybe I am on the right track after all. Maybe I just need to refocus my observation not to what is said but to what was done...drawing more objective conclusions that can be applied to unique but similar circumstances.

So what I'm saying is that I am not going to follow advice as I have been apt to do since launching civiside, but I am not going to ignore it either. I am going to look more deeply into what the person attributes their advice and try to understand where the advice comes from more objectively. Hopefully I will be able to gain additional strategies so that I can come up with ingenious new plays that will move the ball down field. So once again, "why the heavy head?", I have to wake up in 4 hours and churn my way through three-days of well intentioned advice until I find the underlying principles that will guide my strategy going forward. Good luck to me.