He has golfed with legends including Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.

He has caddied for other golfing greats such as Chi Chi Rodriguez and Lee Trevino. He has two holes-in-one to his credit.

Yet, while golf is his favourite pastime, Alan Norris’s proudest moment wasn’t on a golf course.

It was when he was appointed CEO of Carma Corporation in 1994, at the age of 37. Nine years later, he remains president and CEO of one of Alberta’s largest home builders and one of a group of companies under Brookfield Properties Corporation.

“I’m very, very proud to be a part of a company like Carma, which has a legacy in Calgary going back to 1958,” says the Scottish-born 46-year-old. “Becoming the CEO was something I’ll never forget.”

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
lan Norris sees parallels between the game of golf and the business world: “It teaches you to be true to yourself.”

After 20 years with Carma, Norris is one of Canada’s most respected and accomplished executives in the homebuilding industry.

And he’s not too bad in that other game – tee to green. 1. What was your boyhood dream?

“I never thought of getting into the financial side of business. I seriously thought of being a professional golfer. But my marks were good enough so I had the ability to go to university. Three of my friends made it in pro golf. I played pretty good amateur golf, but that was about it. I’m now a four handicap. Gary Player was my idol. I had the privilege of playing with Player and Arnold Palmer. I didn’t play very well, but boy it was a memory I’ll never forget. Palmer has such charisma, pure and simple. He just lights up a room. They were both pure, pure gentlemen.”

2. How do you think your golf experience has helped you in business?

“I think what golf teaches you about yourself is integrity. You have no one to look to but yourself in the game of golf, and you have to be honest with yourself with respect to that. It also teaches you to be true to yourself, hold yourself to a high standard and obviously expect others to do the same. Golf is also a very humbling game, and business can do that to you as well.”

3. Why did you choose to move to Calgary from Scotland in 1980?

“I was a CA (chartered accountant) by profession, and I was with one of the big firms in Scotland (Deloitte & Touche). The firm gave me an opportunity to transfer. I wanted to see another part of the world, and I could see there was a lot happening in Calgary. I saw that Calgary had more of an entrepreneurial spirit, and I thought I’d try it for a couple of years.”

4. What led you to Carma in 1983 from Deloitte & Touche?

“Working on an audit with Deloitte, I came to know Murray Fox (Norris’s predecessor with Carma). Murray moved to Carma in 1983 and asked me to go help him. I had enjoyed the real estate side of the business while at Deloitte. Candidly, I felt that the oilpatch was dominated very much by geologists and those types of people in key positions. I didn’t want to be just going somewhere to purely look after the numbers. I saw that there was more of an opportunity to be more involved in the direction of a company in real estate.”

5. What’s been your main focus since becoming CEO in 1994?

“I have a lot of good, experienced people here and I try to set the goals and direction of the company. I try to make sure we’re all going in the same direction. Hopefully, we share a common culture as to what we think is right – and I believe we do have that, and that’s what makes us successful. We can disagree on certain things as a management group, but we’re not going off on tangents from one another because we share a common vision and culture.”

6. What’s your vision for Carma?

“Our vision is to continue to develop master planned communities, to grow within ourselves where we see opportunities and to make decisions based on as much information as possible. You have to make decisions based on a certain amount of information and a certain amount of gut feel.”

7. What’s your strategy for growing the company?

“We’re now in three markets – Calgary, Edmonton and Denver – and we’re looking to add two (residential) projects in Denver in the foreseeable future. We’re in the throes of taking a small position in a fourth market to test that out. It’s too early to say where that is now. From a practicality point of view, I don’t want to be flying all day to get to an office. It (the future market) is probably down the Rocky Mountain way.”

8. What’s your outlook for the Alberta real estate market?

“I think the prognosis is still relatively good. Alberta is a can-do, will-do province, which is very positive for people who want to make a difference. If jobs are created here and people move here because the opportunities and the quality of life are here, then that obviously helps us sell homes. But just because we build something, that doesn’t necessarily mean people are going to come. We just have to be the best at what we do compared to our competition. It is a very competitive marketplace. The consumers do have a lot of choices. We do think there will be an element of a slowdown in 2003 in Alberta. Kyoto (Canada’s ratification of the international protocol) is also still a question mark in my mind in terms of how it may affect us. As an industry, we’re sensitive to interest rates, and there may be a bit of a void if rates go up. That’s a concern.”

9. Do you lose sleep over what your competitors are doing?

“No. I don’t lose sleep over anything. I can sleep anywhere. It’s not that I treat it (competition) with disdain or anything. It’s just that I learned a long time ago that if you do what you think is best at the time, that’s all you can do. I do take my job very seriously, but I’m not going to take it home with me and eat myself up.”

10. Was there a time when you did allow your job to eat you up?

“Oh, I did allow it to, back in the ’80s. Absolutely. That’s why I learned not to do it anymore. You have to balance your workload with personal life. Otherwise, you’ll eat yourself alive. I try to make sure I don’t bring it home. I try not to be at work too early in the morning or too late at night and I try to make sure my staff are the same way. We all work hard, but there’s got to be a balance. Otherwise, people won’t enjoy it after a while.”

11. What’s your greatest escape from work?

“I love golfing and I golf with my wife and kids. My youngest son is a scratch golfer and now he’s dragging me to the back (long-distance) tees again. We also go skiing in the winter.”

12. Is winning everything?

“No. I really believe in balance. If both people can come away feeling good, be it a golf tournament, a business deal or a dinner meeting or whatever it is, to me that’s winning. I know win-win is somewhat of a cliche, but I really believe that in a long-term relationship, people have to feel good about doing business with you and feel good about doing business with you again. If they’re saying: ‘I don’t want to deal with that guy again,’ that’s not what life’s about.”

13. So what’s the most effective way to communicate in business?

“You have to have integrity, be straight up and tell them what’s up. I’d like to think integrity and honesty are what our company stands for, and I believe I’ve stood for that, too, my entire career. If we feel that we’re at a disadvantage and restricted from doing something we think is right, we’ll fight for what we believe in. But we’ll deal with it honestly and openly.”

14. Who’s the leader you most admire?

“There have been a lot of people who have influenced me, but one person I particularly admire is Murray Fox (former Carma CEO). He gave me a lot of responsibility when I was 26 or 27. He literally threw me in the deep end when I started (with Carma in 1983). He taught me about candour and openness.”

15. Who else has influenced your life and career?

“I learned a great deal from a work-ethic point of view from my dad (George Norris) before he passed away. He’d say: ‘Don’t do anything half-assed.’ ”

16. How would you describe your management style?

“Open. I give people the responsibility to do their jobs, set clear direction for what’s expected and make them accountable for results. I think I use common sense in dealing with people and treat them the way I’d truly like to be treated myself. I probably still stray to some of my comfort zones, areas where I feel I’m pretty good at. I’m not an engineer by profession or a marketer by profession, so I’m not as comfortable in those areas.”

17. What’s the best advice you could offer your children or any youth entering the workplace?

“Always keep options open to yourself and a good work ethic will go a long way in anything you choose to do.”

18. What do you think has led to the high-profile scandals in big business in recent years?

“I think there was a system that developed over time where companies were being measured on what they could do quarterly and, if they missed their earnings, there was a huge dropoff in stock, which only led companies to try to manage earnings to try and meet people’s expectations. Earnings are earnings, and people should respect the fact that they go up and down, depending on what happens in the economy. The lack of integrity and ethics shown by some CEOs is atrocious, but it’s a very small percentage and I don’t want to cast this over the huge number of credible and top-quality CEOs.”

19. How long do you want to remain CEO of Carma?

“I love my job. I love the people I work with. The challenges are never-ending. Every day presents a different challenge. I look forward to making my to-do list in the morning and I like to think I’m efficient in managing it.”

20. If someone told you tomorrow that you had to trade jobs with someone in another career, who would you trade with?

“Oh, I’d give it a shot on the pro golf tour, just for the hell of it. I’m four years away from the senior tour, but I’m a long way away in skills. But, you know, the problem with that is that I enjoy golf as pure relaxation. If it became a job, it wouldn’t be the same. When I think back on it, I’m not sure that’s the type of thing I would do, because I don’t want to lose that ability to have that stress relief.”

THE COMPANY: Carma Corporation
* Brass: Alan Norris, president/CEO; senior VPs – Karen Leeds (finance), David Harvie (planning and
marketing), John Olson (housing), Michael Dutczak (Calgary land), Doug Kelly (Edmonton region).
* Profile: Carma’s core business is the development of master planned residential communities in three markets – Calgary, Edmonton and Denver. It operates two housing divisions – Heartland Homes and Hawthorne Homes. The company has been building homes in Calgary since 1958. In 2000, it was acquired by Brookfield Properties Corporation.
* 2002 Revenue: More than $200 million.
* Website: www.carma.ca
* Calgary head office: 7315 8th St. N.E.T2E 8A2 (403-231-8900, fax 403-231-8960).
* Edmonton office: 1910, 10303 Jasper Ave.
T5J 3N6 (780-423-1910, fax 780-421-4653).

IN PROFILE: Alan Norris
* Born/raised/age: Paisley, Scotland; 46.
* Title: President/CEO, Carma Corporation.
* Education: Bachelor of Arts degree (accounting,
economics), two chartered accountant designations (Scotland and Canada).
* Family: Wife Shelly, four children.
* Career: Norris has spent his career with two firms. He started in 1977 with the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche, where he worked until moving to Carma in 1983 as corporate controller. He progressed up the ladder and became CEO in 1994.
* Moonlighting: Norris initiated the creation of the Carma Centre of Excellence in 1998 and chairs the not-for-profit centre, a central voice for the training and education needs of the residential construction industry.
* Idol: Golfer Gary Player.