More than 20 years ago, I watched a Canadian industry fight for access to its most important market.

In 2001, U.S. growers launched an anti-dumping case against Canadian greenhouse tomatoes.

When I joined the Board of Directors for Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, the trade action was already underway.

The 2001-2002 Trade Dispute

The official trade action began in March 2001 and wasn't resolved until April 2002. Almost fourteen months of uncertainty and stress.

Canada ultimately prevailed. The United States International Trade Commission ruled that the Canadian industry was not selling into the US at less than their costs of production and that the US tomato producers had not been materially damaged.

And then something interesting happened.

You might have thought that the Canadian industry would quickly reduce their exposure to the market south of the border.

But that’s not what happened. The industry kept selling an enormous percentage of its product to the United States...

As with so many lessons in business, I learned this one the hard way.

For years, I was terrible at distinguishing between "this needs attention" and "this needs my personal attention right now".

I cancelled too many vacations to admit to.

Tofino.

New York.

Nicaragua.

Countless others.

Plans abandoned because something came up at work that seemed too important for me to leave. 

And then there was Coldplay.

I had tickets to see them on a Friday night. I’d been looking forward to the show for months.

Then a customer had an urgent issue. A major pivot with a hundred moving parts that they said needed to be implemented ASAP.

So I gave the tickets to my assistant and stayed behind to deal with it.

Monday morning, my assistant shared something rather interesting.

The customer had been at the Coldplay concert.

Apparently, they had decided their urgent problem could wait until Monday.

Of course, I hadn't.

It's funny now.

It was considerably less funny at the time.

The le...