Journal Reflecting: Waterloo, Business, & The Art of War

After finishing my 2-year technical diploma back in 2011 I had a rather interesting experience.

I won't go into all the details but by 2012 I ended up in a small town about an hour away from where I grew up. I was originally an iPhone guy, buying the 3G back in 2008, and eventually switched to Android.

BlackBerry was completely off my radar. However despite my early disdain for the company I ended up getting pulled into the orbit of the company. Firstly because my first job was at a sub-division of Ontario's Ministry of Agriculture. At that time BlackBerry still had a major strong hold inside Canadian government organizations.

Due to that fact I ended up having to make a mobile app I made compatible with BlackBerry. As I only lived 30 minutes from BlackBerry HQ and they were looking for all the talent they could get to launch their new platform BlackBerry 10.

I never worked for BlackBerry directly but sometimes it felt like it:

• Made the same from writing BlackBerry apps as I had working "a real job".
• Lots of free hardware, probably a value of over $3000.
• Sponsorship to run a BlackBerry meetup group, pizza & venue.
• Flown to Amsterdam for BlackBerry European Developer Conference.

Needless to say for a new graduate this was way beyond any of my expectations.

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Not being an official employee of the company also meant my friends & I could do things normal employees couldn't. For example the company would host online "hackathons" where for one weekend only you could make $100 for each app you submitted to the app store, up to 20 apps.

Whenever these kind of promos appeared I ended up working extreme weekends. That is working every single waking hour to get the 20 apps, or at least as many as I possibly could. Not exactly something BlackBerry could have directly asked of its employees.

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I felt like we were mercenary fighters, giving it our all to push against the competition with everything we had.

This kind of way of viewing business was reinforced when I found out one of the co-founders of BlackBerry, Jim Balsillie, always carried around a copy of The Art of War.

To Balsillie business was a sort of modern version of war. I think that is true in a lot of ways. People and companies compete against each other and the results determine where resources go. Those who can find a competitive edge, become stronger, or simply make good strategic decisions will ultimately take the spoils.

These are some attributes I encourage in myself and others based on this experience:

• Clear chains of command
• Taking responsibility when the failure takes place at your level of command
• Extreme loyalty
• Warrior spirit
• Pushing yourself
• Putting aside emotions in matters of tactics and strategy

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I'm a friendly person but I will always be a fighter. Fighting for a more positive future.

Thanks for reading, I'll leave you with a picture of me at a BlackBerry conference with the Stanley Cup:

Stay winning!