Belinda, The Political and Private Life of Belinda Stronach (Don Martin)

So how does a young single mother of two, with no university education and no political experience bring 130 000 new voting party members into politics, help establish a new political party, and be the touchstone for improving Canadian politics in a way not seen since Pierre Elliott Trudeau days? Why money of course and an undaunted determination to see everything she starts through to the end.

This book is an interesting read for a business owner. Here is someone that is in line to inherit one of Canada’s largest corporations. So what could a business owner learn from an heiress?

Belinda Stronach requires no investors and no MBA to one day inhabit the throne of the Magna Empire. She has not always been the ‘heir apparent’. In fact her father’s expectation of her success was to become a good mother and homemaker. What happened, you may ask, to enlighten Frank Stronach so that he would encourage and support Belinda in her rise to power both politically and corporately?

Belinda was a teenager of the eighties, ‘poofy’ hair, tight jeans, and bush parties, does that sound familiar at all? Her teenage life in the public school system was unremarkable. Besides the fact that her family was very wealthy, Belinda was a very average teenager. She walked the halls of the public secondary school with a group of close friends, many of whom are still close with her today. As an academic, her grades where only nominally above average, certainly not what you would expect from the CEO of Magna International. Yet, she possesses a persistence to do things she was not expected to do and go places that her father had only reserved for the male gender.

Belinda is a world class go-getter and also daddy’s litter girl. If she wanted something she would have it but not in the fashion of a spoiled child. Belinda is described in this book and by others as fearless, generous, compassionate, confident, connected, and an exemplary mother and yet she is also described as “rich, a divorcee, spoiled, a socialite, linked to Clinton, running on a whim, buying the leadership…”.

When she realized that the leadership of the newly formed Conservative Party, which she had worked hard to help consolidate, was going to go uncontested to Steven Harper, she decided to throw her hat in the ring. According to those who understood how the electorate worked, she could not win. But, she did not do this on a whim. This candidacy took months of preparation and consultation to decide if it was even worth the effort. Could she pull together a team in time to effectively persuade the membership of the party to elect her as their new leader?

Public speaking was something she had little experience at; some would say a prerequisite for the leader of a country. She could not and would not even attempt to speak French, a leadership downfall in a bilingual country. She knew little or nothing about the issues of the day and of those issues she did know about she had no opinion. It was a long shot, she nearly pulled it off but the race to the election date was full of disappointments and failures on her and her team’s part.

She did win a seat for the Conservative Party under Steven Harper, but was denied over and over any key role in the party. This book makes out Steven as a paranoid monarch, always watching over his shoulder for Belinda, whom he knows is out to take his throne. When she realizes she can no longer support the views of the party she did the unthinkable, at least in Peter MacKay’s mind, she crossed the floor, abandoning their party and their relationship.

Even after all this she had taken her second election in the Newmarket-Aurora riding by a huge margin over the first election changing the riding from a Conservative to a Liberal held riding. It was the only loss of a Conservative seat in Canada and she did it big with the sixth highest voter turnout.

This book is full of anomalies between the “haves” and “have not’s”, the “can’t do” and the “doers” the “academics” and the “self-taught” and they are all playing on the same field. It makes me feel I can play there too because I have lots of what they have and some of what they don’t.

A good read.

Where were you on March 5?

Were you at work? Did you have an appointment? Did you need to make a sales call, a support visit, do training? Did you have to travel at all? No! Lucky you!
I had to visit my client's site to review their new product. It's a 113km mostly highway trek down the 400 to Toronto. "So what", you might ask.

The morning of March 5, 2007 started out quite sunny but the afternoon saw the worst snow storm of the season. White-out conditions were complete, the car that was nicely distanced in front of you was instantly gone and through the blanket of white was their just visible break lights that where closing in quickly. It was a frightening drive. Not only was it a blizzard, it was cold, dipping down to -23 in the evening.

This is the week my husband was away on government training. I am playing single-mommy CEO for the week. I know, it is only a week and there are plenty of people that have to do this every day, all the time. I have great respect for them especially after all the effort I had to go through the make this one day go off without a hitch. So how does a single-mommy CEO prepare to be out of town during the worst snowstorm of the season?

Make Arrangements for the Kids
First you have to make arrangement for the kids in case you make it down to your destination and do not make it back. As it was, the evening school buses where cancelled and many parents could not get to the schools to pick up their kids. We love to blame others for our hardships, but really the contingency plan should have been in place for any day of the school year especially this one that had been was foretold.
I had notified the school and the daycare that both my husband and I where out of town for the day. I arranged for several friends and family to be available if the school called anytime throughout the day. It was a lot of work just to make a 6 hour trip.

Make Arrangements to not get to the client's site
I told you the morning was sunny. On previous days there had been lots of rain. The rain continued on until the temperature dropped and then it changed to freezing rain. Everything was covered in a beautiful shimmering skin, including the roads and the CN Tower. I thought I would save time that day but avoiding the DVP, an infamously over-packed artery to the inner city and go across Lakeshore boulevard. What I didn't know was that the ice on the CN Tower was coming down in sheets large enough to break through windows and cause severe damage. The Gardner Expressway was closed as well as most of downtown, which increased the traffic on Lakeshore. I was going to be late. Luckily I had my client's direct phone number with me and my fully charged cell phone. When I called he had already heard the news and was anticipating the change in time.

Make Arrangements to not get Home
It is important to assume you may not make it home. This scenario is always a possibility with today's traffic, as our highways become more congested every year. In a snow storm the chances of an accident increase. In white-out conditions the number of vehicles involved in an accident can multiply making travel dangerous and stressful.
On this particular day highway 400 witnessed a mind-boggling 70 car pileup. There were some injured but mostly everyone was unscathed. One woman went into labour and made it to the hospital on time. This highway, the main artery for travelling North of Toronto, was closed in both directions for over ten hours, over night, in -23 degree white-out conditions. Many people where stuck idling on the highway, some spent the night in a local mall, and some braved the back roads to attempt to get home.
It is important to always have your emergency kit packed, an extra blanket, some food and water and a full tank of gas. I go to my meetings in business attire so it was also important to bring winter boots and a change of cloths so I wouldn't freeze if I had to be outside for any length of time.

Was I ready?
After my successful trip to visit my client in downtown Toronto I was at the site of this accident travelling North about 30 km/hr in a 100 km/hr zone as short as 30 minutes before the accident occurred. I could have been one of the hundreds of people that had to spend 4 hours or more traversing the countryside in search of a safe way home. At least if I had ended up behind the accident I know I would have been prepared, with my kids at my neighbour’s house, a blanket, a candle, some food and water, my cell phone and my PDA. Thank God I was not one of the people in the accident. I don't want to have to test my preparedness I just want to be prepared. Spending some time upfront will certainly relieve the stress of a bad situation later on.

XML Tools - less expensive, more abundant and easier to use, I hope

You know, eleven years ago I didn't even know a person could be a technical writer. I had no idea the possibility of performing the best part of every job I had ever had was rolled up in a single career. Since then I have had the opportunity to design, code, create or write many of the types of document known to technical writers. What a blast.

Now, for me, the tides are turning. Single-sourcing is looking like the best fit available for many of my clients. At first I looked at my newest client's documentation with the eyes of an MS purest, how can I write all these manuals and still keep the costs down. They have a 400 page user manual and 5 vertical market manuals that need to be created. The software required help files specific to the market, a training video, and web-based FAQs. I couldn't justify the cost involved in writing all this information in a linear fashion. The only way I could see to produce all these documents, keep the costs down and keep the quality was to reduce the amount of information that had to be written. XML and single-sourcing is where I'm looking to handle the load.

XML (extensible markup language) started as subset to SGML. HTML another very small subset of SGML was not meant to handle formatting and SGML is just too large and complicated for the average non-programming writer. When the buzz about XML started showing up on technical writing listserves and in an STC publication I started to get excited about working with it. I could immediately see the usefulness of single-sourcing, and since I was already maintaining a help system written in SGML the code seemed so elegant to me. Many people praised the ease of use when maintaining a documentation system that had been designed in XML, but as Jim Shaeffer posted to the TechWR-L list, Wednesday March 14, 11:17am, "[Early evangelists] skipped [telling us] all the messy part about writing our own programs or researching esoteric tool chains to get what we wanted."

The tools available to small companies 7 years ago where either too expensive, too complicated, or non-existent. One open-source tool, DocBook, provides DTD and Schema's for XML reducing the amount of coding required to build a system, but small companies where not willing to put out the money to implement a system from the ground up.

So I have tried to use as many of the principles of single sourcing and content managment that a company using only MS Word, without version control, could tolerate. This was a difficult effort.

Now, options seem to be opening up all over the place. Tools are not only becoming less expensive, they are also becoming more functional, with interfaces that are intuitive enough to jump right in. There is also an abundance of applications to choose from. What I need to know more about is where does the Content Management System (CMS) system come in and the XML authoring begin, do you need both and which types go together. In an article "Selecting a Content Management System" [Bob Doyle - Intercom, March 2007, p.9], Mr. Doyle estimates the number of "unique CMSs is now somewhere over 2,000 worldwide". With that kind of variety there is bound to be competition and competition begets choice.

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in two product demonstrations and I liked them both. The first was an XML content management system (CMS) XDoc™ from Bluestream Corp running with XMetal as its editor and the second was a help authoring tool called Flare™ from Madcap Software. The GUIs for both these products were so familiar I could have probably faked my way through a project and ended up with something of value.

They both allow for various publications formats (doc, PDF, HTML, help) and they both allow for security and document ownership. XDoc is better used for entire documentation systems, including marketing documents, internal specifications and procedures as well as end-user documents. XDoc is not an authoring tool but it does integrate easily with many of the most common tools. XDoc provide solutions in technical publications, content management, web content management and E-Learning.

Flare on the other hand is a help authoring tool that can generate help files, printed documents, or a PDF via MS word or FrameMaker.

I am still evaluating the costs and benefits for my clients as well as potential alternatives. All I am sure of at this point is that every new client is a new learning experience. What a great job I have!

An Introduction

First I'll give you the official version:

I have been working in high-tech industries for nearly 20 years now. I started ClearComm Information Design to provide high-tech industries with technical professionals for information management.

At ClearComm our extensive experience is evidenced by our strong knowledge base in several different areas: laboratory applications, research, manufacturing, and service industries. Our varied disciplines include IT, electronics, chromatography, biophysics, chemistry, electrophysiology, GPS technology, ultrasonography, and audiology. The accumulation of transferable skills in software applications, hardware, and instrumentation operation allows ClearComm to quickly learn a client's product and industry.

Now the personal slant:

I can hardly believe I decided to run this business, on the cusp of becoming something very large, so that I could have more time with my family (three kids, Connor, Jack, and Chloe and my husband Brian). I am the idyllic model for the 40-something, business owner, career woman, mother, good wife, and life-time learner/student. Where do the years go?

If you had told me 3 years ago that I would consider myself unemployable because of my love for the visionary freedom of owning my own business, I would have called you crazy. Who in their right mind would give up a regular paycheque for the unpredicatable gamble of self-employment. It turned out it was not as much of a gamble as I first thought, but it definitely required an abundance of tenacity to get where I am today.

Well let me tell you it has been three years of growth that I cannot even begin to explain. I love this life. The more I get into the mindset, the more opportunities open up to me.

I am starting this blog to share information about the dualism of being a mom and a business owner in the seat of the CEO. I love how the two "MEs" are at constant odds and yet most things I learn for one job I can apply to the other. There is a fissure and a completeness that both parilyzes and motivates me at the same time.

What a wonderful, fortunate life I lead.