‘Never forget where you came from,’ and other life lessons from Izzy Asper’s big book of axioms

Israel “Izzy” Asper’s manner when I showed up at his office for my scheduled interview in 2000 bordered on suspicious.
“What are you doing coming all the way to Winnipeg to see me?” My rationale was simple. Most of my subjects worked in Toronto where I was based with the National Post. I wanted to hear a voice from somewhere else. As it turned out, Asper, founder and executive chairman of CanWest Global Communications Corp., acquired 50 per cent of the National Post from Conrad Black three months later. Asper may already have had the deal in mind and wondered what I knew. (Asper bought the other half the following year.)
We began the interview with Asper showing me his art collection that included paintings he recently bought sight unseen. An agent acting on his behalf paid $600,000 for 16 works by Tom Thomson and such Group of Seven artists as Arthur Lismer, Franz Johnston, and Lawren Harris.
Asper noted that each painting cost him about $20,000. I did some long division in my head and pointed out that he’d paid almost twice that amount. He waved a hand dismissively and said: “I know as much about art as I do about arithmetic.”
Well, he must have done something right. His net worth was $1.5-billion.
Asper’s business savvy was legendary; his conversations dappled with adages. “Never do a little deal. Never forget where you came from. Never forget that the system is based on greed.” Leonard, his younger son, once produced a list of all the Asper Axioms, as they were called. When I asked Izzy how many axioms there were, he said 40, 50, or maybe even 100. Numbers, totals, such a nuisance!
As the interview progressed, it seemed that the former leader of the Manitoba Liberal party and long-time owner of Canada’s most profitable television network, had either lost his way or found another.
“As I got into my sixties I started to like my people too much,” he told me. “The relationships were becoming too personal because we’d been together so long. I couldn’t bring myself at all times to be as hard-nosed or as pro-corporate as a CEO should be. As I started to realize that the age clock was ticking, I realized that I had a whole list of personal agenda items that weren’t being addressed.”
I’d never heard any business leader admit to such a quandary.
“Everybody should be phased out of whatever they’re doing after five years or 10 years because for the first period of that you’re giving it your best lick, you’re challenged,” he said. “And for the next period, if you stay too long, you’re spending your time defending what you’ve done as opposed to innovating more.” Put that way, running a company seemed more like personal therapy than a professional thesis.
In 1997 Asper had named long-time colleague Peter Viner chief executive, saying Viner would step aside when one of Asper’s three offspring, David, Gail, or Leonard, was ready to become CEO. Two years later, Viner told him the time had arrived. Izzy asked his three children to choose a leader from amongst them. Only Leonard wanted the job. David departed to run a Winnipeg-based property management firm. Gail remained corporate secretary and later became the driving force behind the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg that opened in 2014.
In fact, Izzy claimed it didn’t matter to him whether or not an Asper ran CanWest. “I never trained my children, or caused them to be trained, to run this company. I trained them to own the company. There’s a huge difference. You don’t get friction when three owners are sitting in a room, it’s only when one of them is CEO and he gets defensive about what he did last week or dividends have to be cut because we bought Company X and your sister or brother or your nieces and nephews are mad at you.”
Nor was his own legacy relevant.
“All my life I’ve always been my own judge. You’re sorry if people don’t like you, and you’re also disappointed if they don’t like you for the wrong reasons, but at the end of the day, you are the best judge if you are living by a code of ethics that you are satisfied with. Success is an entirely personal thing. I don’t regard myself as successful — yet.”
Success also eluded Leonard during his ten years as CEO because of the heavy debt load brought on by Izzy buying National Post. When CanWest finally foundered in 2009, many of the assets were seized by creditors and sold to former competitors. Izzy died in 2003 so, fortunately, did not see his creation collapse. Or maybe, Izzy would simply have said: art, arithmetic, success, succession, what does it all matter?