Last spring, Ottawa city manager Bruce Thom stood before city council and laid down the law to his elected bosses.

A smart bureaucrat with Herculean chutzpah, Thom told councillors they had one choice. Only one Canadian management consultant could offer the experience, smarts and velvet touch required to apply a crucial final massage to Ottawa’s complex municipal amalgamation scheme.

Thom insisted that, contrary to policy, this $600,000 contract should be sole-sourced, handed to the consultant on a platter. No bids tendered, none accepted.

Councillors scratched their heads and grumbled. Some had never HEARD of this super-human consulting machine.

Jack Dagley, for Business Edge
Don Cummings of TurnKey Management Consulting in Edmonton has a leg up on the competition in helping organizations make critical administrative changes – and his relaxed, informal style is welcomed by companies faced with making tough decisions such as amalgamations and budget cuts

It wasn’t Clark Kent, the Terminator or Donald Rumsfeld.

It was a cuddly bear of a guy who wears golf shirts, sneakers and Levis to work. Portly, affable, no-pretence Don Cummings of Edmonton – CEO of TurnKey Management Consulting.

Appearances notwithstanding, he’s a Kickass Guy. It says so on TurnKey’s website (www.turnkeymc.com).

But such are his gifts that when Cummings has worked you over, you barely realize his shoe leather has caressed your backside.

The private and public-sector client base of this three-year-old company is strictly A-list:

Cisco Systems’ national offices in Brussels, London and Madrid. Alberta Justice. The respective administrations of Ontario cities such as Markham, Oakville and Hamilton. (Ottawa, too. Bruce Thom made his point).

The Alberta Medical Association. The University of Alberta. The Alberta Association of Registered Nurses. Even the Alberta Bottle Depot Association.

TurnKey Management Consulting CEO

“A lot of the work we do is extremely hard. How do you walk into an office and convince several hundred people that the jobs they’re doing have to change?” Cummings asked rhetorically. Answer: tread softly.

“We’ve developed our company on a set of Polyanna ideals. We have fun while we’re working. We try to help people self-actualize and learn how to get what they want out of life,” said the man in the golf shirt.

If the pitch sounds too New Age for your tastes, don’t jump to conclusions. These guys get tangible results. And, except in cases where major surgery is required (i.e., the amalgamation of 12 municipalities in Ottawa), TurnKey seldom leaves a trail of bloodied corpses.

“In most cases, the downsizing has been done by the time we get called in,” he said.

Now 42, Cummings made his name at Ernst & Young in Edmonton, becoming a partner at age 37 after only five years with the firm. In 1997, the U of A-educated MBA helped the city of Edmonton to streamline procedures while trimming millions from the budget.

Cummings’ work on that project (known as City 97, it drew raves and awards from municipal planning organizations) introduced him to Thom, then Edmonton’s city manager.

“In ’97, Don and his team cut $24.1 million a year out of Edmonton’s annual budget,” Thom remembered recently.

“His current company, TurnKey, has the most laid-back style I’ve ever seen. They don’t show up in $1,000 suits and start telling you what’s what,” he said.

“They tend to get the staff on board very quickly. They get staff to open up regarding their perspective on what the problems are.”

Cummings and two partners – Mike Hughes, ex-Ernst & Young, and Don Schurman, a former president of University Hospital – incorporated at the dawn of the millennium and turned a profit in their first quarter. Today, the company has 85 employees and 10 partners in three cities (Toronto opening soon) and is currently engaged in about 100 projects.

Clients call TurnKey for one reason: to add muscle tissue to flaccid revenues.

“Companies can add 20 or 30 per cent to their bottom line by clarifying their organizational systems and priorities,” Cummings insisted.

“TurnKey helps public-sector clients differentiate between core services and ancillary ones. “One Ontario town runs a marina on Lake Ontario,” he cited an example. “Why? We say: ‘You’ve got sewers and you’ve got a marina? Which can you do without?’

“A lot of cities operate cemeteries. Why? They don’t even have the resources to run core services anymore.” Ironies abound, meanwhile, in the private sector.

Remember when all those middle managers were hacked during the downsizing ’90s?

TurnKey often discovers that they’re sorely missed. A crucial link has been lost on the two-way communication route between the high, the mighty and the rank and file.1

“Today’s companies are wondering: ‘What if we downsized too much?’ ” Cummings noted.