The document discusses how Canada's national brand is an underutilized asset that Canadian companies could leverage more when competing globally. It notes that only 23% of Canadian trade is outside of the US and many mid-sized Canadian companies are not operating internationally. The author argues Canadian companies need to embrace more ambition and take risks like "hidden champions" - small companies from around the world that have achieved significant market share in niche industries through traits like strong leadership, high performance standards, focus, innovation, and an ability to adapt. Canadian businesses are encouraged to learn from these companies and better promote their own operations under the respected Canada brand.

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Wrap your business in the flag Canada is a ‘wonderful’ brand that can be leveraged by organizations
competing on a global stage – a realm where too
many homegrown firms are failing
BY LIZ BERNIER
WE ALREADY know Canada is a name that inspires pride and recogni-tion
around the world. But what we might not know is this: It’s also a po-tential
brand — one that’s been consistently underutilized by Canadian
organizations.
That was the central message author
and consultant Doug Williamson de-livered
at a Strategic Capability Net-work
event in Toronto.
“I want you to understand that this
brand — this wonderful, well-regard-ed,
credible brand called Canada — is
under-leveraged around the world,”
said Williamson, president and CEO
of the Beacon Group. “We haven’t
done a very good job of taking the
brand called Canada and wrapping
it around our companies and having
them go out to explore the rest of the
world.”
The country is falling further and
further behind, he said. The opportu-nities
are endless but the vast majority
of small and medium-sized Canadian
companies are not competing on a
global stage — 77 per cent of our trade
is with the United States of America.
“We suffer from a deficit of am-bition.
We’re not hungry enough.
Now, I’m not talking about the big
banks that have been very successful
internationally or the big insurance
companies that have been successful
internationally or the large resource
companies… there’s no question that
we have a number of very successful
multinational corporations. But they
are in the minority when it comes to
the Canadian business landscape,” he
said.
“One of the reasons we are where
we are is that we’ve had it way too easy
in Canada... in fact, our good fortune
of residing just north of the U.S. mar-ket,
and our good fortune in fish, min-erals
and farming, has meant we’ve
been able to be very successful up to
this point — more by good luck than
hard work.
“The fact is, we’re amateurs when it
comes to the global environment.”
The competitive landscape has
changed and we can’t afford to contin-ue
to underutilize our national brand,
said Williamson.
And this isn’t just a challenge for large
corporations.
“(It’s) Canadian businesses in Monc-ton,
Saskatoon, Kamloops, Brockville…
because they’re the real face of Cana-dian
business — it’s not Bay Street. And
out there, the pain in middle-market,
middle-sized companies is significant,”
he said.
“In every other country that’s success-ful
today, the engine for growth is their
mid-sized companies. But we don’t have
enough of them, we’re not diversified
enough.”
There’s a huge transformational chal-lenge
facing Canadian business in all
sectors and companies of all sizes — and
we have to come to grips with, or at least
have a willingness to acknowledge, the
fact that we need to have that type of
major transformation, said Williamson.
“We can’t be successful in the future
by doing what we’ve done. What got us
here won’t keep us here,” he said.
“I’ll just ask you to think: Are we hun-gry
enough? Are we ambitious enough?
Why don’t we play business the way we
play hockey? Why are we afraid to go
into the corners with our elbow up when
we have business internationally, yet we
admire that when we play hockey?”
Hidden champions
If we really want to overcome this
ambition deficit, we need look no
further than “hidden champions,” said
Williamson.
“These are companies you’ve never
heard of, who have over a 50 per cent
market share, who by definition are
twice the size of their competitor, and
who have dominated and continue
to dominate a niche,” he said. “Over
80 per cent of them come from small
countries.”
Leadership lessons
One of the first lessons we can learn
from these hidden champions is
around the importance of leadership,
said Williamson.
“They’re all led by executives who
have a very fierce resolve to change the
world. They have a deep, deep desire
— they’re patriots, and they are tena-cious.
So tenacity is key.”
These organizations also have in-credibly
high performance standards,
he said.
“They are really tough on their
people, they deal quickly with under-performance
and they treat their star
performers in a very special way. They
understand a simple rule of econom-ics:
Fair does not mean equal.”
These companies operate in a
highly decentralized manner, putting
accountability firmly on the shoul-ders
of executives. They’ve decided
to dominate a niche and, as such, they
have incredibly crisp focus — they
know exactly what they’re good at,
said Williamson.
Another common characteristic?
These organizations are incredibly
driven.
“They have lofty ambitions. If you
go and visit some of these companies,
you’ll discover that their expectations
for growth are in the 20-to-25-per-cent-
a-year range. When you look at
Canadian companies, it’s almost as if
we’re afraid to set the bar too high for
fear we fail — so let’s set the ambition
bar low and at least we can make it.
That’s not a trait of a hidden cham-pion,”
he said.
Hidden champions also have a
“glocal mindset” when moving inter-nationally,
said Williamson.
“When they go to a country, they
don’t send bucketloads of expatri-ates…
they try to be part of the local
community and they represent them-selves
that way,” he said.
“The vast majority of hidden cham-pions
are from small towns, not big
cities… and there’s an issue there that’s
interesting, because they understand
community. They understand family,
they understand roots in the commu-nity,
they understand common sense,
they understand practicality.”
Innovation is another key trait be-hind
these organizations’ success.
“They’re serial innovators… they’re
the ones that kill their own products
and reinvent before they allow a com-petitor
to kill their products. And it’s
the difference between a Sony and an
Apple,” he said.
Related to innovation, there is also
the necessity of “going with the flow”
and being comfortable with uncer-tainty
and ambiguity.
“In the world we live in today, there
is no executive or company that is
smart enough to predict the future.
So if you’re not building a resilient or-ganization,
an adaptable organization,
an organization that can go with the
flow, you’re not going to be set up for
success,” he said.
“It’s time to rethink the game.”