DECODING THE OPENVERSE™

MARK J. BARRENECHE A

Open verse

V E R S A N T

Decoding the OpenVerseTM

BY MARK J. BARRENECHEA
OPENTEXT CEO & CTO

BARRENECHEA, MARK J.
Versant: Decoding the OpenVerse™
First printing, November 2022
Printed in CanadaFirst Edition

ISBN
978-1-989511-03-9

PUBLISHED BY
Open Text Corporation
275 Frank Tompa Drive
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
N2L 0A1(519) 888-7111
info@opentext.com
www.opentext.com

6 — SETTINGOUR COURSE
2 4 — PULLING Gs
5 1 — WHAT WE DO
7 1 — WHO WE ARE
9 2 — WE’RE NOT FOR
EVERYONE1 0 6 — WHAT YOU’LL DO

00
Setting
ourcourse6

If you wish to build a ship,
do not divide peopl e intot eams and send t h em tot h e for est to c ut wood.
Inst ead, t eac h t h em tol ong for t h e vast andendl ess sea .

The Little Prince,
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

HAS NEVER MOVED THIS FAST

The

d
l
r
o
W
W I L L N E V E R M O V E T H I S S L O W LY A G A I N

SETTING OUR COURSE
You’ve probably seen the breathtaking images beamed backto us by the James Webb Space Telescope from a million
miles away at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point.
The first of these images that was revealed to the public
included an impossibly detailed look at what NASA
Administrator Bill Nelson said was a patch of our sky thatwould be as large as “a grain of sand held at arm’s length”
to someone standing on the Earth’s surface. In that single
image, we saw an estimated 5,500 galaxies, containing
trillions and trillions of stars, and all while looking back13.2 billion years in time.
Faced with such enormity, it can feel like there is moretime—and more work—behind us than in front of us.
But the reality is that our universe is still in its infancy.
Thirteen billion years is a blink of the eye in the trillionsof years it is theorized that our universe will exist.
I have always been inspired by this idea:

Be humble for we are madeof dust. Be noble for weare made of stars.
What does that have to do with OpenText? Our company
and our universe share something important in common:though we have some time under our belts, our mostinspiring and exciting times are still to come.

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SETTING OUR COURSE

Seismic shift

The next few years will transform OpenText.
Earlier this year, we introduced the OpenVerse™—the next
phase of evolution for our company.
In the simplest terms, the OpenVerse™ is about OpenText
being reborn in the cloud.
But the simplest terms hardly ever capture the full scopeof an idea.
In reality, the OpenVerse™ is not only a shift to the cloud,
but rather a wholesale reimagining of how information is
managed via technology where we are no longer boundby location, infrastructure, time or space. Machines now
generate one million times more information in one day
than all humans on this planet do in an entire year.
The OpenVerse™ is being designed to change the way
machines, people and organizations use information
to work and collaborate, how supply chains become
just-in-time networks, how individuals experience andtrust information, and how we can truly deliver on thepromise of the Information Age, where machines are
the primary generators of information.
It is the future of our company. It is the future of business.
It is the cloud, and beyond, past the reaches of thestratosphere. It is exponential. It is quantum. What is
the universe computing if not itself?
No one can know exactly where we’re going. Thirty years
ago, I was gazing at circuit boards through a microscopetrying to puzzle out and understand Von Neumann

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SETTING OUR COURSE
architecture and his notation of singularity. It was an era
where a lot of our energy was devoted to figuring out justwhat computers could even do, let alone expecting themto run so much of our industries and our lives. I started
my career in compilers with a love of language andcomputational linguistics. Compilers are the creators of
all software—they are the big bang of the digital universe.
I didn’t know business software would be my career. I was
peering through microscopes to make sure we got the details
right, working to perfect recursion and register coloring,
generating assembly language through translators, andusing Yacc to parse different code languages.
Floating point processors, C, Windows, Unix and C++
were still new, still raw. The staggering computational power,
and connectivity, and automation, of our current world weremetaphorical light years away. The most powerful libraryfunction I had was malloc() and we communicated throughprintf(). It was the computer-age equivalent of stone
knives and bearskins.
But progress moves quickly. Faster than we can everimagine. We traversed those light years in barely three
decades. And the pace hasn’t stopped. As a company,
we have sped to keep pace with advancing technology.
And if I indulge in a moment of reflection, we’ve succeeded.
The work we’ve done to create platforms and solutions thatmany of the top companies on Earth use to stay in businessevery day is nothing short of staggering. We are relentlessand determined in advancing how companies use andempower information. We have helped the world’s largest
companies evolve, and so too have we evolved.
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SETTING OUR COURSE
Information growth is exponential and accelerating. We havenever moved this fast. We will never move this slowly again.

The extreme

This unstoppable tidal wave of progress carries us,
shapes us, drives us forward. In my lifetime, I hope to
see Von Neumann architecture die out and be replacedby quantum. Silicon Valley will have to be renamed
Graphene Valley, as graphene will replace silicon as thesubstrate platform of choice. Moore’s law will yield toMetcalfe’s law as the world is increasingly powered by
distributed networks (and we’ll talk more of grids later on).
At OpenText, we have embraced this momentum as an
essential piece of our core philosophy. We are definedby digital, and forged by code.
But even as I write about microscopes and sweating thedetails, just as important is taking a step back, or up, andlooking at the big picture. It is important we develop theskills to look both through a microscope—the details—anda telescope—the big picture.
The forces that shaped the mainframe and the birth ofsoftware and the explosion of the computer age—the riseof the personal computer, client/server computing, mobility
and the internet—were precursors to the world we live innow. They shaped where we have come, but they do notdictate where we are going.
The future is always made from the best parts of today,
and we write our own future. We are taking the next stepat OpenText—into the OpenVerse™.

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SETTING OUR COURSEWe are working to leverage the extremes of thisever-changing world.
Extreme connectivity—five billion people on one network,and everything is always on, 24/7.
Extreme automation—technology that can act for itself,
and the APIs that direct it.
Extreme computing power—ubiquitous infrastructure more
powerful than any of us could have imagined back in the
1980s. We all have a supercomputer in our pocket.
In this age of extremes, OpenTexters take a leading role inmaking and moving the future. We see the potential before
us, the goals that we can reach, and we set ourselves thetask of bending the future to our will.
And we have fun along the way.

DetourHere is a maze. See if you can find your way to the end.
Don’t be afraid to mark up this book. That’s what it’s for.

DIRECTIONSGrab a pen and complete the maze.

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SETTING OUR COURSE

FinishStart
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SETTING OUR COURSE
That wasn’t so bad, was it?
How did you get there? What did your path look like?
Maybe you set off in one direction on a whim, forging a path
as you went. You may have hit a few obstacles along the way.
Eventually, I’m sure you found your way to the finish. But
here’s the thing, there was more than one way to get there.
Are you the type to consider multiple paths before putting
pen to paper? Some people like to start at the conclusion
and work backwards, eliminating potential missteps aheadof time.
There’s no wrong way to get to the finish. The important
thing is setting your eyes on the goal.
But what if I showed you that same maze in a different light?
Flip back to your first attempt at the maze. How many ofthese pieces did you collect on your first time through?
All of them? One or two? None at all?
Try it again, but this time set yourself some new objectives.

DIRECTIONSSOLUTION ON PAGE 120

Collect all the stars. Take the longest
route you can. How about doing it withoutcrossing your path or doubling back?
Your choice. Have fun.

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SETTING OUR COURSE

FinishStart
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SETTING OUR COURSE
Remember, to lead is always a choice. Leadership is nota right. It is not given. It is not anointed solely from one’s
position. Leadership is developed, earned, and it is a choice.
The choice is yours.

Stepping outside the lines

I like to think of this little exercise as being emblematicof what it’s like to work at OpenText.
At other companies, you’re not only given a task and a goal,
you’re also given a rigid set of directives within which you
operate. They tell you where you’re going and precisely
how you’re supposed to get there.
No deviations. No stepping off the beaten path.
That’s not how we operate. I’ve heard from colleagues herethat when they arrived at OpenText, they had to retrain themuscle memory they had built up from dealing with the lackof trust where paths are dictated and decisions are madeonly by a select few.
At OpenText, we cherish the ability for all of our employees
to explore the maze—and their careers—in their own uniqueway, so long as our eyes are fixed on the goal. It is my job,
and the job of leadership, to help our employees be theirbest, to encourage being true to one’s self, to unlock theirpotential and passions, in the context of our business.
We understand that sometimes the greatest discoveries
are made when you venture away from the straightest line
between two points. Maybe it’s a technological advancementthat no one anticipated. Maybe it’s the solution to a customer
problem that no one had thought to solve before.
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SETTING OUR COURSE
Careers are not ladders—worst analogy ever. A ladderimplies a straight line, the need to knock others off the rungs
above you to advance, and for you to drop your luggage so
you can climb faster. Careers (not jobs) are purposeful—you
navigate the opportunities and obstacles along the way,
and you almost never move in a straight line.
And we also recognize that everyone makes the wrong
choice sometimes. It’s human. It’s real life. Our first thought
when someone makes a mistake isn’t to reprimand or
criticize, but rather to explore what the person learned.
It is a part of our company that I greatly value. We have been
shaped by what we observe about how other companies
operate that we do not accept as part of the status quo.

Choosing to be different

I’ve experienced that rigid corporate culture in my past.
I’ve seen what it does to a company, and the people
who work there.
I’ve learned from every experience I’ve had—positive andnegative. I am my experiences, as you are yours.
I’ve seen how companies encourage productive growth andoutcomes in its employees. I’ve also seen environments thatbring out the worst in people. Deliberately.
There was a time, earlier in my career at another company,
when I was leading a department. We had rival divisions, andwe were always set against each other for resources, money,
people. In one particular instance, another department head
and I were explicitly matched up and told “Only one of you
can win. Go out and kill the other guy.”

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SETTING OUR COURSE
So I did. I won. My group came out ahead. The philosophy
was to ‘set the best people up to fight and then see who
wins.’ Participating in that process, even willingly at thetime, felt terrible. It leaves you hollowed out. You’ve won,but at what cost and through what amount ofpointless waste?
When I came to OpenText, I swore never to create anenvironment like that. I had to shed that skin. OpenTexters
don’t see each other as adversaries. We rally together forthe right outcome. We are incentivized to work together,to push each other to be better.
I believe it’s part of what I see as the Canadian heartof OpenText. We are a global company, with operations
in Canada, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, India, thePhilippines, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France,
South Africa, Australia, Singapore, Korea, China and many
more countries. But we began in Waterloo, Ontario, and that
Canadian DNA remains and informs everything we areand everything we do.
We are kind, but we are fierce. We may fight, but weunderstand that we are challenging each other in serviceof something greater, not to push someone else down
to step over them.

True OpenText character

Character grows out of the values that individuals hold—and
uphold—as important to them in all aspects of their lives.
It can’t be faked. It can’t be forced.

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EVERYCOMPANYHAS A
CULTURE.
FEW HAVE
CHARACTER.

SETTING OUR COURSE
Character is the natural result of bringing a group, no matter
what the size, of like-minded people together, and the result
being more than the sum of its parts.
Only a handful have been able to achieve this at scale.
That’s what makes OpenText, OpenText.
I believe this character is what allows our company to standas unique in an industry that too often puts outcomesahead of people.
But what does that have to do with you?
You might be a current OpenText employee wondering
why the hell Mark is sending you this book to read.
You might be a prospective OpenText employee who wants
to know exactly what you’ll be getting into.
Or you might just be someone curious to know more about
what makes OpenText unique.
Now is the right time for this book, for this examinationof our company.
So why should you read this book? Why do we deserve eventhese slim few minutes of your precious time and attention?
Because we want to show you why you belong here—or
maybe even why you don’t. And because I want to shine
a light on what makes this company, and the people whocomprise it, so special.
At the end of the day, this is about ROIT: return on invested
time. If it takes me 100 hours to write this book, and it takes
you 2 hours to read it, I am hopeful this will have a highreturn, with one of three outcomes:
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SETTING OUR COURSE#1 You will come work with us
and build the OpenVerse™.
#2 If you’re already here, you
can help us even more.
#3 That we are not a good fit
at this stage of your career.
OpenText is 30 years young as a company. It took us those
30 years to achieve $3.5 billion in revenues, and we aspire
to double again. We recently announced our intent to acquire
Micro Focus, which we believe greatly expands our potential
and accelerates our aspirations.
We were not born cloud, but the cloud is the single-mostprevailing and pivotal technology movement of the current
age, so we are reborn. This rebirth makes us stronger,
due in no small way to the fact that we have such a strong
foundation to build from.
And we’re not stopping there. Clouds can only reach as highas about 280,000 feet above the surface of the earth. We’rereaching beyond that, into outer space. Into the OpenVerse™.
We embrace the currents of the forces that have made us
who we are, and that continue to remake the world aroundus. We embrace connectivity, security, innovation, putting ourcustomers first, and most importantly, retaining our humanity
and helping each other thrive today and in the future.

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01
PullingGs
24

If your dr eams do notscar e you , t h e y ar e
not big enou g h .

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

PULLING Gs
Who thrives at OpenText? What do we look for in who
we hire? Who do we build up? What do we nurture?
At the end of the day, a company is who they hire,
fire and promote.
A lot of this comes down to what we ask of potential
employees, and what we look for in the culture of companies
we acquire. Skills can be taught. Character can’t.
There are a ton of tactical, day-to-day HR methods tomeasure performance and to gauge certain types of valuethat an individual brings to a company. We use plenty ofthem, measuring tasks against performance, outcomesagainst plans, and so on.
The alchemy in finding the right people comes in what you
can’t measure—either before someone is hired or even once
they’ve been at your company for many years.
Plot an X/Y graph. On the X axis is time. On the Y axis iswhat you can accomplish (your potential). The Y intercept iswhat you know today—it might be anywhere; a notch or two
above baseline, at the baseline, many notches up, or evenbelow zero. But here’s the lesson: a little bit of slope canmake up for a lot of Y intercept.
Slope is the rate of learning, and you should always hire
the individual with greater growth potential, even above
someone with more experience, if you are confident of
the slope.

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PULLING GsY
B

POTENTIALA

BASELINE

TIME

X

Truly assessing what a person—what a company—ispotentially capable of is the greatest unsolved riddle
in business.
We look for people who exhibit characteristics of what
we like to call the G-Force.
This type of person shows qualities of a few special
characteristics and embraces certain ideas.
We seek gamers. With grit. Who are at home in guilds,
and embrace growth and goals. Who practice gratitude.
The G-Force.

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PULLING Gs

GamersThere is something about the feeling of cracking a seemingly
impossible puzzle that can’t be duplicated anywhere else in
the human experience.
Physical challenges can’t quite scratch the same itch.
Maybe someone grows a little taller, is built a little stronger,
can hold their breath a little longer, and they are advantaged.
But curiosity is universal. The desire to uncover what is
hidden. The drive to fill in the blanks, to crack the code.
When curiosity mixes with a little healthy competition,
I believe wonderful things can happen.
A gamer at OpenText is someone who wants to solve the next
big business problem ahead of the team across the hall, or
the company across the street. And they want to do it square.
By the sweat of their brow and the strength of their ideas.
At OpenText, we operate like we’re playing in a local rechockey league—call it an inherent part of our foundational
Canadian DNA.
You’re friends with everyone on your team, and probably theother team too. When you’re on the ice, you might talk a little
trash. You’ll hit hard. There might be a little bit of blood on
the ice by the end of the game, or even a tooth or two.
We call them Chiclets.
But once the final buzzer sounds, you shake hands,
have a good laugh, and share a beer.
Games are more satisfying when you can work together
to solve it, not when you’re hammering away at a problem
alone in a room.
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PULLING Gs
And games aren’t always just in service of having fun.
Games can challenge you to think differently, to see
solutions that would otherwise have eluded you.
Games can bring people together—sharing a victory overtreacherous odds can bond a group of people likenothing else.
And games can even bring enlightenment or spiritualsatisfaction. In many religions, the image of a labyrinth
is used to guide meditation and lead to clarity or fulfillment.
To find your way to the end is to turn a meandering journey
into a meaningful one.
At OpenText, we are endlessly curious. We play, we compete,
we search, and we do so with delight to find what mysteries
await us when we reach the final level.

Grit

Nothing worth doing is ever simple. Nothing worth having
ever comes easy.
Shortcuts and easy answers are rarely pathways tosustainable success. If they were, someone else would
have beaten you there a long time ago.
To succeed in anything, you must be determined, strong
and resolute. You must not let any obstacles in your way
stop you or discourage you.
To be slowed down is not to be defeated. To be challenged
is not to be discouraged.
And the thing about grit is that it multiplies. If you standalone against a challenge, your own determination—however
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PULLING Gs
mighty—may not be able to overcome. But if you arein a team of those that share a willingness to persevere,
the collective force of your tenacity can increase
exponentially. Strength multiplies strength.
But sometimes, a task can just be really hard. It can takea strong individual spirit to reach the end.
Like this. Many of the other detours in this book are meant
to be clever illustrations of a larger point. Or fun ways tolearn something new about yourself.
This one is just hard. Really hard. See if you can make itto the end. Just remember, you need to think big.

DIRECTIONSSOLUTION ON PAGE 121

Travel from start to finish by moving along
a number of wires. To move from one wire
to the next, you must:• Leap from one shaped node to anotherof the same shape.
• Leap from a hollow node to a solid one.
• Leap in straight lines—up, down,
left or right, never diagonally.
• Leap over at least one other wire before
reaching the next node.

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PULLING Gs

FinishStart
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PULLING Gs
Another thing about having grit at OpenText is that weall understand what having grit really means: that you’ve
experienced failure.
Failure is an inevitability. It is an essential part of doing
business. No plan succeeds right away. No product thrives
without stumbling.
The typical Silicon Valley maxims to ‘fail fast,’ and ‘fail often,’‘break things,’ etc, often strike me as a little empty, as theytend to only apply to the company or products themselves.
Not to the people within.
In those stories, companies are allowed to fail. Entire
businesses are permitted—even expected—to go under,
leaving behind them nothing but a few patents and someoffice furniture.
Then the next startup takes those ideas, that tech (andsometimes even those same Aeron chairs) and moves onto
the next thing. It’s seen as a rite of passage for founders
to have a couple of failed companies under their belts.
But that doesn’t account for the smaller, more humanfailures that take place at companies every day.
That type of tech mindset venerates failed companies
but abhors mistakes made by individuals.
Personal errors—bad lines of code, a botched marketing
campaign, a lost deal—become fodder for ridicule withintech companies. Sole contributors, who were trying theirbest, are scapegoated or outright dismissed. People areseen as disposable while the technology and the cultureof the company, which are often as or more responsible

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PULLING Gs
for the mistakes in the first place, continue to blunder forward.
Remember, it’s the fat on the steak that provides all the flavor.
Overcoming the myriad small (or large) personal mistakesthat are the stuff of everyday life and work takes grit.
And it takes an environment that understands what
it takes to build up that grit, that toughness.
We see mistakes as normal, and failure as inevitable.
We’ve all been there. If someone at OpenText makes
a mistake, or if a project fails, we don’t point fingers.
We embrace the people who took part, ask what theylearned from the experience—because failure always,
always teaches us something—and we move on.

GuildsIn medieval times, some of the earliest examples ofcollective unions working together for the bettermentof individuals and industry alike were guilds.
Guilds represented tradespeople in skilled areas of work,
such as blacksmithing and brewing, among many others.
The aim of these collectives was not solely to bring industry
people together. Guilds enabled and encouraged thedissemination of knowledge and skill across generations,and the ongoing communication of the value of that knowledge.
When you joined a guild, you became part of somethinglarger than yourself. You joined a like-minded community,
a fellowship, a “band of brothers” (and sisters—because theskilled trades had no shortage of women, despite what thelopsided recollections of history would have you believe).

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PULLING Gs
Guilds strove for their trade—the skills, the value, theprosperity they created—to endure across generations.
Perhaps it’s a grand notion, but that is how we view ourcollective at OpenText. We aim for our relationships between
employees to be more than simple teams within a company.
When our people work together, it’s more than a quid pro
quo interaction. Those who thrive at OpenText don’t think
about ‘what’s in it for me.’ They think about how to achieve
the ultimate goal, and how to do it together.
Our people work together in ways deeper than simple
teamwork. At OpenText, we know that none of us knows
everything, and we rely on each other to achieve theamazing things we do.
We protect each other, and we protect our knowledge.
We take great satisfaction in sharing that knowledge—inhanding what we know across to others so they can beenriched by our experience and our expertise.
And this attitude prevails beyond the walls of individual
departments within OpenText.
The nature of our company is such that we come frommany different places.
Different backgrounds. Different cultures. Different partsof our planet. Some of us are long-time OpenText veterans,
growing through change over many years. Others still fromteams that joined us through acquisition. And yet those
who thrive here all share an important core ideal: the ability
to work together without hubris, without ego, and without
putting others down so you can rise up.
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PULLING Gs
Almost 500 years ago, Shakespeare coined a term I used a
bit earlier: band of brothers. (And sisters, I hasten to add.)
It was in Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3, a speech from King Henry
to his troops on St. Crispian’s Day, the eve of the Battleof Agincourt.
Henry’s English forces were vastly outnumbered by the French
armies. His troops were lamenting their small numbers.
The King was having none of that. He gave a rousing speech
about fighting with those at your side and fighting hardest
because you were doing so for each other.
He spoke of being able to look back with pride and honor
on the scars and memories from the coming battle and that:

From this day to the endingof the world, [we] shall be
remembered—we few,
we happy few, we bandof brothers.

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PULLING Gs
The British won the day, and turned the tide of history.
Henry’s words were about a bond and a partnership thatis stronger than all others.
So too are we at OpenText a band of sisters and brothers,
a happy few who at the end of our careers will look backat our monumental achievements and say “We did that,and we did it together.” All Together. Tous ensemble.

GrowthA “growth mindset” is about more than increased profit
or customers.
Because growth happens to more than a company’s
bottom line.
It happens to products, which evolve beyond their initial
parameters.
It happens to companies, which discover new strengths
and solve new problems far beyond an original mission
statement.
And most importantly, it happens to people.
People grow in their roles when they find a part of their job
that inspires them to be better. To be more.
They grow in their lives as they take on new responsibilities,
be those at work or at home.
They grow within themselves as they learn new things
about the person they are—they can even become
someone totally new.

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PULLING Gs
I believe it is hugely important to recognize and acknowledge
all manner of growth, and to encourage every one of ourpeople to explore what growth means for them as individuals.
Growth can be linear, or it can be a cycle. It can even mean
starting over.
Life is based on growth. The universe is based on growth.
And the old maxim is true: grow or die.
Sometimes a person starts in one path, in one career, andeven if they are advancing on the surface, they feel like they
are stagnant—or worse, regressing.
Even if someone is doing all the “right things” andprogressing in title, getting pay bumps and taking on more
responsibility, it doesn’t mean that they are growing—if that
isn’t the path they are meant to be on.
Make no mistake, as the CEO & CTO of OpenText,
I understand the importance of progressing along acareer path, both in my own history and for the good of all
employees. But I also understand that just as each of ouremployees is a unique individual, so is what growth looks
like for each of them.
Just as growth is vital for each of our employees, so too
is it for OpenText as a company.
We’ve been bold about our plans and actions for growth.
We have scaled our business from our first dollar of revenue,
to our first million, to our first 100 million, to our first billion,
and now to $3.5 billion. We have never lost sight of the valueof a dollar.

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PULLING Gs
I have spoken publicly about doubling our company, again.
We recently announced our firm intent to acquire Micro
Focus. They are an amazing company with amazing people,
technology and customers.
Doubling again is an ambitious goal, but in my opinion,
it is within our reach.
So just as I encourage our employees to grow, I also call uponeach of you to help us make our overall growth a reality.
If you’re willing to come along, I can promise you that ourcompany will do everything it can to help you undertake yourown journey of growth into who and what you’re meant to be.

Goals

At the end of every game is a final goal. At the end of every
journey of growth is a destination.
At OpenText, we are keenly focused on setting,and reaching, ambitious yet attainable goals.
We have been spitefully written off as safe and conservative
because we focus on maintaining profitability. Other
companies might operate at a deliberate loss in service ofbuilding an impossible product or of gaining an advantage
on a competitor.
But, even for companies who have succeeded in that modeof operation, doing so is, in my opinion, not about reaching a“goal,” it’s about chasing a fantasy. It’s gambling. It’s putting
the stability and security of your company—and all thepeople who rely on it—at risk unnecessarily.
I see us as outsiders, as iconoclasts, as outlaws. Not as safe.

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PULLING Gs
We also understand that even within one company,
sometimes one team’s goal is at odds with the goal ofanother. There is often a big picture at work that not
everyone can see at every moment, so even if you areworking cross-functionally and notice that someone isworking on something that doesn’t quite fit with what yourteam is doing, you remain focused on your own goal.
Successful OpenTexters are comfortable setting real goals,
meeting them, then setting higher goals. Pragmatism andhonesty are key factors of setting effective goals.
A goal set too far in the future invites a lack of focus andscuppers the possibility of achievement.
A cavalier goal set too high is begging for disappointment.
It’s important to distinguish, however, between a cavaliergoal that’s too high and one that is just ambitious.
We aspire to double OpenText again.
Our real, lived experience shows us that this goal is within
our reach. Our core businesses, combined with our recent
moves into new and exciting areas of business—security,
for instance—shows that our potential is there, just waiting
to be unlocked.
It’s our shared goal. And each goal that we all set forourselves every day, every week, every quarter, gets us
closer to making it a reality.
Then once we meet that goal, we’ll set a higher one.

40

PULLING Gs

Gratitude

Gratitude is more than giving thanks and being kind. It is theway you forge connections with others. When appreciationis shown, it empowers and motivates everyone around us.
Gratitude is a habit essential to anyone looking to be
successful at OpenText.
You are grateful to others for your own success, because
no success is built by one set of hands.
You give thanks to those around you—those who challengeyou, those who support you, those who laid the groundwork
upon which you built.
Gratitude is the hallmark of a healthy emotional intelligence.
You recognize the importance and contribution of others.
You are respectful and strive to celebrate and champion
talent and ideas.
If you are unable to demonstrate genuine gratitude,
to express it beyond platitudes, you have no humility.
Without humility, there are no relationships.
Without relationships—with each other, our customers,
our partners and our communities—we will cease to exist,
both corporately and emotionally.
Working at OpenText can be tough. We are a company
that demands excellence, and we don’t seek the spotlight.
Like excellence, gratitude is a daily practice—an expectationof ourselves and each other.
It is our willpower: to continuously put our customers,
and their ambitions, first.

41

PULLING Gs
Gratitude grounds us. It allows us to be present. It gives us
perspective. When the pressure is on, the chaos of deadlines
looming and tension mounting, gratitude guides us.
It reminds us why we are here, the purpose of the work.
In the face of turmoil, it is essential to the spirit of those
who succeed at OpenText.
There will always be emergencies, but we face them
together. We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with colleagues
whom we trust to do the right thing for our work, ourcustomers and each other.
We are grateful for the opportunities and challenges ahead,safe in the knowledge that we have each other and are
motivated by the work to do good things. Gratefully.

The final G

Six qualities make up the character of a successful
OpenTexter, which we’ve explored above.
One more G encompasses all of those into how they are lived
in and by each individual. It also speaks to how we operate
as a company, in a way that I believe is in stark contrast to
how most of the tech industry exists.
To truly exhibit and believe in the Gs, and to exist as acustomer-first company, you need to act in service to thosearound you, without ego and without reservation.
You must act with grace.
The final G.

42

PULLING Gs
To be understanding. To offer favor—even when it is not
required. The word’s Hebrew roots connect ‘grace’ with‘favor’ directly, and go farther: to act with kindness evenas a superior to an inferior.
Grace, as a word or an idea, has a certain weight attached
to it. Some religions believe that capital-G “Grace” is only
something that can be given by God. I respect that belief,
but I also believe that it is incumbent on all of us mere
mortals to act with whatever human grace we can,whenever we can.
I believe we owe it to each other to act with kindness andcharity. And I believe that as a company, we owe it to ourcustomers to place them first and to align our work andour goals with theirs.
Grace is how we look after each other at work every day.
It is how we can push each other and disagree but still
shake hands and appreciate each other’s time.
Grace is what other tech companies actively eschew throughcutthroat competition for favor, or glory, or title. What they
abdicate by taking advantage of customers, by invading
our privacy, by putting their own success ahead of theircustomers’ or our world.
Grace is the glue that holds us all together, providing theframework through which we live and work at OpenText.
This is “pulling Gs.” The G-Force: Gamers, Grit, Guilds,
Growth, Goals, Gratitude and Grace.

43

WITHOUT GAMERS, WE WOULDN’T STRIVET O P E R S E V E R E T H R O U G H S H E E R G R I T.

W I T H O U T G R I T, W E ’ L L N E V E R F A C E
O U R C H A L L E N G E S A N D G R O W.

W I T H O U T G R O W T H, W E’L L FA I L TO
HONE OUR AMBITIONS INTO GOALS.

WITHOUT GOALS, WE’LL NEVER OVERCOME
THE ODDS THROUGH GUILDS.

WITHOUT GUILDS, WE’LL HOLLOW OUT OUR
EFFORTS BECAUSE THEY L ACK GRATITUDE.

WITHOUT GRATITUDE, WE’LL HAVE LOST
SIGHT OF A WORLD SHAPED BY GRACE.

W I T H O U T G R A C E , W E F L Y A P A R T.
WE LOSE THE GAME.

02
What
we do
51

W e have to dar e tobe our selves , howe ver

fr ig ht ening or st r ang et hat self may pr ove to be .
May Sarton

WHAT WE DO
OpenText is everywhere.
We enable trillions of digital transactions a year across
100 million end users.
We build cultures of knowing through information andcollaboration platforms.
We power supply chains all over the world, helping
companies put products on store shelves.
We find the needle in the haystack to defend the innocent
or incarcerate the criminal.
Without us, trucks can’t fill warehouses, businesses can’tsell products, and people can’t eat.
We’re finance. Our software enables movement ofmoney through ACH and Swift protocols. If a businessor government or individual needs to move funds acrossborders or around the world, we’re there.
We’re health care. We enable the rapid exchange of
medical records between doctors, hospitals and clinics
to keep us healthy.
We’re aerospace. Manufacturers and researchers use
our technology to design, build and move aircraft aroundthe world.
We’re consumer packaged goods. We help companies grow,process and ship the food that fills grocery store shelves
and pantries.

53

WHAT WE DO
We’re humanitarian. Our systems power technology solutions
for refugees to help stabilize and resettle those impacted
by wars and disasters. We also provide services to globalorganizations working to end the exploitation of children
around the world.
We’re energy decarbonization.
We’re self-driving cars.
We’re clinical trials and connected healthcare.
Our main product domains are information management,
customer experience, business networks, threat intelligenceand data protection.
We are everywhere.

A day in the life

What did you do today? Where did you go? What did
you eat? Did you buy anything?
I’m willing to bet that if you’re reading this in the vicinity
of one of our major centers of operations, more than one
aspect of your life has been touched by OpenText today.
We are the largest software company in the world thatyou will never see on TV, on a racing car, or on a billboard.
But our customers know us intimately and trust us with
their most sensitive data and transactions. We are theirlife partner.
Let’s use New York City as an example—I know this isn’t
a universal example, but just for illustration purposes.

54

6:45 AM

7:30 AM

9:15 AM

10:45 AM

12:30 PM

3:00 PM

4:15 PM

6:30 PM

9:45 PM

10:30 PM— EAT A BOWL OF CEREAL.
— STREAM SOME TV WHILE YOU
GET READY FOR THE DAY.
— ARRIVE AT WORK ON PUBLIC
TRANSIT AND OPEN YOURLAPTOP.
— LEAD A CONFERENCE CALLFROM YOUR OFFICE.
— YOUR PHONE BUZZES WITHA TEXT FROM YOUR MOM.
— QUICK CHECK-UP AT YOURDOCTOR’S OFFICE.
— IT’S GETTING COLD OUT,GRAB A WARM HAT.
— DINNER AND DRINKS OUT
WITH FRIENDS.
— TIME TO RELAX AND OPEN YOURLANGUAGE LEARNING APP FOR
YOUR DAILY LESSON.
— RUN THE DISHWASHERBEFORE GOING TO BED.

WHAT WE DO
OpenText touched it all.
Sustainable products in your cereal. IOT on public transit.
Support for tech manufacturers. The networks thatpower teleconferencing. Supply chains for your phone.
Manufacturing your warm weather gear. Administration forrestaurant chains. App development support. Appliancemanufacturing logistics.
Nestle, Fox Entertainment, New York City Transit, Dell,
Cisco, T-Mobile, Blue Cross, Carhartt, Bloomin’ Brands Inc.
restaurants, Heineken, Rosetta Stone, Miele. OpenText
was there!
That’s a pretty typical day.
What we do matters. Daily life continuing uninterrupted for
hundreds of millions of people around the globe relies on
OpenText systems.
We don’t get to take our eyes off the goal or whiff on a
product release. The work we do at OpenText today literally
keeps the world working.
This isn’t practice time.

Detour

But it can also be puzzle time.
The work we do here is important. Now, however, is time forsome even more crucial work: ordering lunch for your team.
Much of programming is all about logic. Many of OpenText’s
products involve parsing incomplete data to find results.
This little detour involves both.

56

WHAT WE DO
You are tasked with placing a pizza order for your team’s lunch.
Your office cafeteria can make custom pizzas with cheese plus
two additional toppings from a list of four toppings.
Each of your colleagues gave you their order, but you got
overconfident and didn’t write it down. You remember a few
details about who ordered what, and you’re sure you canwork out everyone’s pizza with the information you have.

DIRECTIONSSOLUTION ON PAGE 122

Figure out the toppings for each pizza.
• Each pizza has any two toppings:
pepperoni, olives, onions and sausage.
• No two pizzas are the same.
All ingredients are used only twice.
• Rhett and Celeste had one ingredientin common, but it wasn’t pepperoni.
• Mohinder and Rhett had one ingredientin common, but it wasn’t olives.
• Together, Sasha and Rhett had
all four toppings.
• Mohinder had sausage and Celeste
didn’t have olives.

57

WHAT WE DO

TOPPINGS58

WHAT WE DO

Where we come from
We are innovators.

OpenText as it exists today grew out of a project at the
University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada. But nothingin our history is a straight line.
Our earliest beginnings were focused on creating software
to index the full Oxford English Dictionary. That work led us
to write code for searching and indexing huge volumes oftext online.
In the mid-1990s, as our history page on the OpenText
website tells it, we shipped our first web-based product,“allowing Yahoo! to search every word on every webpage.”
Some of our code formed the backbone for searchon the internet.
Our software powers 97 out of the top 100 companies
on Earth.
A major customer who uses both platforms told us:“If our ERP goes down, we can manage for a week on manual
processes. If OpenText goes down, we have to ground all
our aircraft immediately.” Our job is making damn sure that
OpenText doesn’t go down, that our customers stay up,
and that we continue to innovate new solutions to keep
global business flowing.
We’re different. We know it, and our customers know it.
We build our reputation on not just great technology but
on our post-sales support. More than that, our customers
tell us we’re different.

59

WHAT WE DO
When our customers have a problem, we’re more willingthan other companies to meet them on their side of theline to solve it.
We don’t pull out our contracts whenever there’s a challenge
and point out that it’s not our responsibility to solve it.
We roll up our sleeves and get the work done.

Our fluency in the languageof business

Some of our earliest lines of code decorated the walls of
our Silicon Valley office. We entered the building every day
under the watchful eye of one of our earliest innovations.
Our true expertise today is in helping companies power andprotect information—in whatever form it takes—elevatingorganizations of all sizes to be their best.
The list of accomplishments from 30 years of ourcompany includes some transformational technologies
and ground-breaking technologies that underpin someof today’s most essential systems.

62

INTERNET SEARCH

You r e a d t h e story a f e w pa ge s ba c k

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
O ne of ou r p r i mary c la i ms to f a me

OPTICAL CHARACTERRECOGNITION
C om p u t e rs t h at c a n rea d

PROTOCOL AFTER PROTOCOLE D I , SM S, F AX , AC H , I OT…

BUSINESS NETWORKSE RP t o E RP , C lou d to C lou d

FORENSICS

T h e E xon e r at i on M a c hine

WEB-BASED DOCUMENT
MANAGEMENT
In s i d e t h e f i r e wa ll

WEB-BASED CONTENTMANAGEMENT
O u t s i d e t h e f i r e wa ll

MEDICAL RECORD TRANSFER
K e e p i n g p e op l e a li ve a nd hea lthy

TRADING GRIDSO r c h e st r at i on ba sed B2B re lati onships

DYNAMIC PROVISIONING
FOR B2B SERVICES

D y na m i c i nt e r f a c e f or a Tra di ng Gri d Ser vice

BANKING INTERFACES (ACH/SWIFT)

Ge t m one y w h e re it needs to go , qu ic kly and s ecur ely

EBXML

E l e c t r oni c B usi ne ss XM L

ADAPTIVE/DYNAMIC CASE
MANAGEMENT
N o C od e Ap p l i c ati o ns

LEGAL-TECH DOCUMENT
MANAGEMENTE D RM

METADATA

D ata t h at s orts yo u r data

BEHAVIOR-BASED SECURITY
PRODUCTS
N e u r a l - ne t w ork AI

PRIVILEGE HIERARCHIES

Se c u r i t y As s e rtio n M arku p La ngu a ge

BRIGHTCLOUDU RL Th r e at I n telli genc e

AUTOCLASSIFICATIONOF INFORMATION
K - N N . N a ï v e - B a ye s

END-POINT DETECTION
AND RESPONSE
D i s c ov e r y a nd C M D B

MDR AIM a g e l l a n P l atf orm

MANAGED XDR
C l ou d s e r v i c e s

DESKTOP SYNC

E n c r y p t i on, t okeni zation, c ompre ssion

COMMUNITY-BASEDANTI-MALWARE
T h r e at H u nt e rs

BUILD-ON-THE-FLY
REPUTATIONAL INDEX
Spar k M L a nd lots of c ou ra ge

MORE TO COME (+)

T h e s e ar e t h e bu ilding blo c ks f or you — your Leg ob r i c k s , y ou r i ngredients— to c re ate the O penVers e tm .

WHAT WE DO
We also work with and refine a subset of information
algorithms that each do incredible things.
Our technology can find hidden information in a sea of raw
data. It’s like a game of Where’s Waldo, or finding a needle
in a haystack, only if you don’t know what Waldo—ora needle—looks like in the first place.
Our algorithms need to evaluate seemingly random data andlook for very specific pieces of information and then parsewhat they could mean. Can you work some of the same
magic—without an algorithm to help you out?

DetourSpycraft in the early-to-mid twentieth century often reliedon subtle methods of contacting agents that were hiddenin plain view. It was a matter of knowing how to separate
relevant data from the unrelated information around it.
One method that intelligence agencies had for making
contact with agents was to seed coded messages into
seemingly innocuous radio programs. An agent’s namewould be scrambled and hidden in innocent-sounding text.
When an agent found their name in a broadcast, they would
know to reach out to their handler.

DIRECTIONSSOLUTION ON PAGE 123

A five-letter first name is hidden in the
anecdote that follows. See if you can findthe name. (Hint: it starts with ‘S’)65

WHAT WE DO

The class of bright students
was always full of ideas. It wasa challenge for the professor
to keep up with the speed andconfidence with which the classoperated. No group of students
had ever caused the professor
to cast aside her lesson plan soearly in the semester—it wasa challenge to be relished. She
and her aides huddled late into
the night to come up with newand exciting challenges forthe group to solve.

66

WHAT WE DO

There are no limits

Our range of outcomes is practically limitless.
The simple idea of “what we do” as a company canencompass so many products, technology areas andapplications that defining us down to a simple mission
statement is practically impossible.
And that is what makes working here so amazing.
You can wake up in the morning and have no idea what
your day will bring, or what problem you will help solve.
A career at OpenText can be the same type of story asthat of our company.
It can be anything.
As I told you earlier, maybe somewhere in the multiverse,
OpenText is the name in internet search. We took adifferent path.
Any one of those myriad ideas in the impressive list earlier
can occupy an amazing team for years at a time—or they
could drop out in a heartbeat.
You could build business networks one week and be working
in security and threat detection the next. You could befacilitating global supply chains on a Monday and building
systems to help cure cancer by Thursday.
We don’t just build technology. We help the world soldier on,one (trillion) piece(s) of information at a time.

67

WHAT WE DO

Where are we going?

Looking at what we do is important. Even more importantis understanding where all that work leads us.
Without strategy—without a goal—you will end up miredin products without a purpose or a cohesive whole.
As they say, if you don’t turn soon, you will end up exactly
where you are going—whether that’s where you actuallywanted to be or not.
That’s why OpenText has decided to make a deliberate turnand triple down to transform our business and accelerate
into the next generation of the Cloud, which we call
The OpenVerse™.
The OpenVerse™ is where information lives. You see,information is exponential, machine-created, everexpanding, autonomic. It touches and influences every
human being, every machine, everything. Technology is anevolutionary process that improves itself—it multiplies and it
evolves. Information innovation is multiplicative, not additive.
Information is sentient and it lives in the OpenVerse™,
which holds all the world’s knowledge. The OpenVerse™
is the dictionary. The index of a functioning society.
I hope you will help us to rediscover our roots in the OED as
we aspire to be stewards of all the world’s information—to
rediscover where we started, and to learn that place again,
as if it were new.
The OpenVerse™ is cloud native. It is information
management at scale, powering large and smallorganizations alike.

68

WHAT WE DO
Its domain is frictionless business for content, collaboration,
support chains, customer experience. It is trust.
It embraces the developer.
It supports sustainable and inclusive growth.
It will create ultimate cultures of knowing. It will help cure
cancer, power supply chains, find the next 100 years ofenergy, create commerce, help all humans to have an IQ
over 150, save one percent of the world’s trees.
It will create a new sense of joy for information technology.

Will you help us create
the OpenVerse™?

69

03
Who
we are71

L ife isn’ t about finding
your self. L ife is about
cr eat ing your self.
George Bernard Shaw

WHO WE ARE

DIRECTIONSSOLUTION ON PAGE 124

Complete the crossword on the following
page using these clues.
AcrossDown

02

THE _____ IS ALWAYS RIGHT

01

NEWS, DATA

06

NINTENDO PRODUCT OF 2006

03

ONE’S ATTITUDE OR PERSPECTIVE

07

ASTONISH

04

SPEAK TRUTH TO _____

08

A WINDOW TO THE SOUL, IT IS SAID

05

BEADS ON A LIP

09

THE ACT OF SPEAKING UP

10TAKE THE _____ ROAD

11_____ MANUAL

11

MANIA OR HYPER-FOCUS

13_____ WORKERS: COVID HEROES

12

A _____ IS BORN

17_____ IN CRIME

14

SANTA’S POLE

18

UNISON, MUSICALLY15MINUTIAE

19

THE HOBBIT: AN _____ JOURNEY

16

BEYONCÉ, AKA SASHA _____

21

COMPLETE

20

WORTHY OR DUE

23

SOMETHING TIED ON A SHIP22

OUR COMPANY24

QUALITY OF GREATNESS

25

WELCOMING, OPEN TO ALL

28

TO SERVE AND _____

26

MEASUREMENT OF INCREASE

30

U.N. _____ DEVELOPMENT GOALS

27

BE _____, REWIND

31

TARGET (OR A BYGONE CHAT TOOL)

29

RELY ON73

WHO WE ARE

2

3
.

9

25
11

12
15

16

17
8
21

22

24

19
26
28

29

27
20
1

30

23

5

4

6
31

7
10
13

14

18

74

WHO WE ARE

Choice words

You probably picked up on a few things as you workedon that crossword.
We borrowed most of the words for that from a central
piece of OpenText philosophy.

This is the OpenText Way. It is the combined representationof our company’s operating tenets.
The OpenText Way is a connected philosophy. It shows how
our goals and our deliberate modes of operating—of working
and relating with each other and our customers—intertwine.
75

WHO WE ARE
There are four aspects that surround the heart ofour philosophy.
North star: That which guides us, brings us forward, andpropels our people and the core of our business goals,
which are to power and protect information.
Frontline obsession: We put relationships with our customers
at the forefront of everything we aim to achieve.
Owner’s mindset: I want every employee to be, and act,
as if they are an owner of the business. That means we makelong-term decisions, always have a bias for cash, and wechoose excellence over harmony. We aren’t afraid to pushand challenge each other, to be our best. (Though it’s vitalto also respect one another, even in times of disharmony.)
Total growth: Life is based on growth. If you are not busy
growing, you are busy dying. So total growth relies on us
behaving as if it is always day one on the job, with energy
and ideas and change, building eco-systems, and growth
to us is only good growth if it is sustainable and inclusive.
These interconnected concepts—this OpenText Way—isour espirit de corps in the OpenVerse™, and it produces
our company values (also found in the crossword):
Be deserving of trust.
Sweat the details.
Aim high.
The unexpected ‘wow.’
But there’s one value missing. What about three words fromthe crossword that haven’t fit anywhere so far?
76

WHO WE ARE
The Nintendo ‘Wii.’ A ‘knot’ tied at sea. The ‘eye’ as
the window to the soul.
I admit a bit of trickery there.
Sound those words out. Go ahead, say it out loud.
Wii, knot, eye.
We, not I.
Our final OpenText value. And in my opinion, the mostimportant one.
We are not a company of glory-seekers, or of cutthroat
competitors. We do not work to advance selfish goals or
to push our colleagues down. If you’re already at OpenText,
or if you join us, you will note that whenever I reach out andaddress the company in talks or communications, I always
purposefully start with “Dear colleagues.” Never “staff.”
Never “employees.” We are colleagues.
And we are a collective that understands the importanceof collective good versus selfish personal gain. We do not
suffer those who are cruel or craven in pursuit of success.
If you’ll forgive the language: assholes are not welcome here.
Look back at the crossword. Read those words again.
Now take time to acknowledge something.
I didn’t write those words. You did.
Those are your words. Those are the words of yourcolleagues at this company.
They define who we are and why our customers choose
to place their trust in us every day.
77

WHO WE ARE
Our systems power essential infrastructure all around theworld. We manage information and secure data for hospitals,
governments, national security agencies, global aviation
corporations … the list really does go on and on. These majororganizations have the choice of any technology in the world.
And they choose OpenText.
They trust OpenText.
We work every day, with these values at heart, to continuallyearn and justify that trust.

We LOVE our customers

Our values exist deeper than a piece of graphic design
to put on a poster or in a slideshow.
We are always in search of new ways to earn the trustof our customers.
A typical customer engagement approach uses the
LAER model: land, adopt, expand, renew.
We felt that model was too inward focused, wasgrowing outdated, and didn’t reflect the more active andcollaborative way in which OpenText serves our customers
in the OpenVerse™.

78

1		
2		
3		
4

LAND
OPERATEVALUEEXPAND

WHO WE ARE
As in any engagement model, you must first land the customer.
But in a traditional model, the next step relies heavily on thecustomer to do the work to ‘adopt’ your offerings. In a rapidlychanging technological world, no company can be expected
to know how to integrate outside systems. It is incumbent on
the supplier themselves to take an active role in onboarding
and integrating their technology into a customer’s tech stack.
It’s not just about selling a product to be dealt with by thecustomer. It’s about operating an always evolving set oftools that can grow and adapt to a customer’s needs.
We never sell a ‘finished product’ to our customers.
We sell the promise of creating the best possible solution
to a customer’s needs—even if that solution doesn’t exist
yet. We help them find it.
Once that is achieved, then the customer sees the full valueof what OpenText can offer. The relationship builds and
OpenText demonstrates just how integral our systems canbe to power and protect a customer’s information and toachieve their ultimate business goals.
At this third stage of the old engagement model, LAER is
already seeking expansion—without even ensuring that acustomer is satisfied. Again, looking inward, at a company’s
own needs, not at the needs of those they serve.
LOVE builds value and communicates trust. Only thencan you explore continued partnership and expand yourbusiness with a customer.
LOVE really is, as the song goes, all you need.

80WHO WE ARE

Flip the script

As a company, we fly inverted.
One thing that everyone notices when they join OpenText
is that the first time they see an org chart, our leaders areat the bottom.
This is not by accident.
It is one of the ultimate acts of corporate hubris to build
a traditional org chart that places the CEO, or the headof a department, at the top.
To me, it brings to mind an analogy about monkeys.

DIRECTIONSSOLUTION ON PAGE 125

Upside-down, backwards—OpenText doesthings different. A cypher is when eachletter of the alphabet in a block of text is
substituted for another. In this text, V = E.
Discover the cypher to decode the message
and unveil the aforementioned analogy.

82

WHO WE ARE

RM Z GIVV UFOO LU
NLMPVBH, DSVM
LMV RH ZG GSV GLK,VEVIB NLMPVBFMWVIMVZGS RH
ZODZBH OLLPRMT FK
ZMW WVZORMT DRGSGSV VCXIVNVMG
GSZG UZOOHUILN ZYLEV..
83

WHO WE ARE
To me, it simply isn’t sustainable to run a company in the way
described in the previous puzzle, with employees trying toscry meaning from scattered guano dropped by leadership.
Those in positions of authority should never act without
thinking of what their decisions will mean for those whowill have to make those projects a reality.
Everyone here is accountable. Everyone considers what theiractions mean for those around them.
And for those lucky enough to be in a leadership position,
it is understood that the job of a leader is to stand in supportof everyone who works for you, not to lord over them.

Who you help defines who you are

The most telling part of who we are is when our clients achieve
great things using our technology. Or when we lend our voice
to crucial inflection points in an industry, or in our world.

Who we are is easieraccess to essential
health information.
When the U.S. National Institutes of Health—the centerpieceof national health administration and the hub of researchand communication for health professionals for the entire
country—had to shift its workforce online to allow
work-from-home at the start of the COVID-19
pandemic, OpenText made it happen.

84

WHO WE ARE
Our technology enabled health and research data to flow
seamlessly. Hundreds of millions of lives depended on
unimpeded access to health records and to clinical trial
data that aided the development of COVID-19 vaccines.

Who we are is feeding children
and keeping them safe.
When the pandemic upended day-to-day life and schoolingacross America, children who depended on the school
system for meal programs could have gone hungry.
But OpenText was there.
The Garland Independent School District—one of the largest
school systems in the state of Texas—relied on OpenText
systems to facilitate its digital collaboration and ensure
delivery of tens of thousands of meals for children every day.
And when law enforcement and prosecutors needed tocollect and organize data on child trafficking at the Southern
Alberta Internet Child Exploitation Unit, our technology
reduced time to case closure and improved investigationand prosecution rates.
Children are safer today because of OpenText.

85

WHO WE ARE

Who we are is when the world
is a little bit greener andnature a bit happier.
South African National Parks uses OpenText for critical corefunctions and collaboration on its operations, which include
endangered rhinoceros conservation projects and the
management of more than four million hectares of land.
Dozens of OpenText clients leverage our technology to
reduce paper use across a huge range of departments.
Accounting, logistics, human resources—areas ofbusiness basically synonymous with “paperwork.”
A little bit of math here: One tree produces 10,000 pagesof paper. In 2019, businesses printed more than three trillion
pages—an amount that is also coincidentally the estimatednumber of trees on the planet. Can better information
management save one percent of the trees on earth?
If tech like ours can save businesses 280,000,000 printed
pages, we sure can. And we’re on our way.

Who we are is curing
deadly diseases.
Roche—one of the world’s biggest biotech companies—uses
OpenText tech along its entire value map to help teams share
information on patient treatments during cancer care.
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WHO WE ARE
And Cardinal Health, a global health services company,
is relied on by 90 percent of all U.S. hospitals, 29,000
pharmacies, not to mention millions upon millions of patientsto deliver crucial medical supplies every day.
Cardinal Health tells one particular story about how little
margin for error there is in their industry. When life-saving
medical treatments are being shipped across the country,
every single second matters. Some individual medicines
and treatments are so sensitive, so delicate, that theirwindow of use is vanishingly small. These items are createdin climate-controlled labs and manufacturing facilities, andgetting them to clinics and hospitals to save lives requires a
dizzyingly complex supply chain. Every step of the process
is checked and rechecked and contingencies are built
into contingencies, because if you don’t, someone will die.
Cardinal Health uses OpenText to build and manage these
logistical networks, to get these life-saving drugs into thehands of the doctors and nurses that need them in the
precious 30-minute window before they expire.
Cardinal Health uses OpenText to help save lives.
This one strikes a little close to home.
In 2015, I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia(AML). I was given a five percent survival rate for the next
two years. But being the person I am, and the admittedly
privileged position in which I found myself, I threw myself
into research and worked with doctors and experts fromacross the globe to leverage advancements and treatments
into a plan for my unique situation.
Seven years later, and thanks to more than 600 hoursof chemotherapy, radiation treatment, a bone marrow87WHO WE ARE
transplant, immunotherapy and recovery work, I am
cancer-free. I had access to treatment and expertise.
I am proud that our company makes the work of thoseexperts—and millions more—available to patients whoneed it that might not have had access otherwise.

Who we are is the company
that works with clients tomake all those things happen.
We didn’t set out to achieve any of those results—not at
first. No one at OpenText woke up one day a few years ago
and said “We’re going to protect children today” or “We’regoing to save the rain forest today” or “We’re going to cure
cancer today.”But we did come to work every day with the goal of helping
our clients achieve all of their most important feats.
We didn’t say: “Our products can’t do that.”
We said: “How can we help?” It is never a ‘no,’ it is a ‘yes, if.’
We operated with the grace to look beyond what we
believed was possible and into the realm of the impossible,
and then we made it happen.
I also learned servant leadership through my cancer journey.
When I was in the hospital for over 60 days, every nightat 3AM a nurse would come in and gently wake me, sayhello, and draw my labs. These nurses and hospital staff
88

WHO WE ARE
never treated their work—or me—with disdain. They were
professional. They were kind. They took what could havebeen a rote, mundane or unpleasant task and made it
humane. They showed respect and treated me as a person.
It forever ingrained in me a “servant attitude” towards
leadership: to provide the most respect for those who may
be in a position of less authority than you, who do their workwith precision, with purpose, and with love.
My own journey—through tech, through Silicon Valley,
through cancer, through the valley of the shadow of deathand life itself—has helped me see what I can do to help thiscompany be successful, and what I can do to help make you
successful. Humbly, I am now here to share what I know andwhat I have, to share the rod I carried, so you can help make
OpenText—and yourself—the best we can be.

Bad language

OpenText operates one of the most diverse talenteco-systems on the planet.
We are a collective of engineers, developers, architects,
Dev-Sec-Op experts, cloud experts, threat hunters, security
experts, value engineers, implementation consultants,
transformational consultants, call center experts, service,product marketing, product management, inside sales,
outside sales, quality engineers, user design professionals,
and even more.
But we are more than a collection of titles. We are experts.
OpenText is comprised of 99 percent Bachelors graduates,
40 percent Masters, and 20 percent PhDs. Our pooledknowledge, expertise and dedication is staggering.
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WHO WE ARE
We bring together all of this talent for a common goal
and build a unit that is more than a typical company.
Ten years ago, the role of Dev-Sec-Ops expert simply
did not exist. Our ecosystem will create new knowledge,
and the diversity of our expertise will co-mingle and create
new species of professionals whose skill sets are brandnew to our industry and our world.
The obvious metaphor to draw on here is one that is so
overused (and abused) by corporations as to be cliché.
The F-word. Family.
And as much as it’s hacky and trite, and even though it’s
far from a perfect illustration of how OpenText exists, thecomparison isn’t inapt—though how I’d employ it differsfrom how you might expect.
Where other companies will say “When you work here,
you’re family” to engender loyalty, what they mean is“Work harder for less money. Don’t let your family down.”
That’s emotional blackmail.
Other invocations of family also overlook that the very idea
of family can be fraught. No two families are alike, and none
are perfect. Some families are blood, others are made bychoice, and none have less value than others. We borrowthe most important parts of ‘family’ and discard the rest.
When I look at how OpenText feels like family to me, I think
about how even when we fight (and we will fight), and whentimes are tough (which they will be), our people know thatthose around them will support them no matter what.
We strive for familiar, not formal.
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WHO WE ARE
And to flip the idea on its head entirely, I also believe that
OpenText respects the idea of family by acknowledging that
we are not that, for everyone. For many, if not most, of ouremployees, family is another, wholly separate priority.
We understand that life doesn’t begin and end when work
starts in the morning, and that priorities can shift within
a year or within a moment.
I believe, and I try to lead our company to believe, that themost important ideal to imbue in our employees is the same
one that parents should teach to their children: that each of
us must design ourselves by what we love—that you are you,and no one else.

We are not here to“find ourselves.” We arehere to “create ourselves.”
We celebrate and shout our uniqueness, seek to be no one
but who we are, to create ourselves every day, and to wrapthat conviction in a thousand suns.
We trust that if given that space, that trust, and that
freedom, each of us can attain the joy and fulfillment thatwill let us do our best every day for ourselves, each other,and our world.
That is who we are.

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04
We’re
not for
every
one
92

Oppor t u nit y is misse d bymost peopl e because it is
dr esse d in over alls andl ooks lik e wor k .
Thomas Edison

WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
When I started in tech, product cycles could take years frombeginning to end. I was educated by classics such as the
Mythical Man Month and The Boeham-Waterfall Model ofengineering. I’m ancient, is what I’m trying to say.
You wrote code on whiteboards and tested on closed systems.
You manually debugged thousands—even millions—of lines
of code. Oh Hex, you debugged code in a hex editor.
You assembled test environments on bulky machinesand built programs from arcane languages.
After years of work, a product would be born.
To get it into peoples’ hands, you made thousands offloppy disks, or pressed millions of CD-ROMs and mailed
them in padded envelopes all around the world.
“Oh, the retro-aesthetics!” to quote my niece.
Feedback from customers came in on comment cards,
or by faxes and phone calls—emails would come later,
once adoption of the internet grew. Rarely, if ever, did you
get to see how your code was being used in the real world.
Patches were a pipe dream. Once something was out thedoor, once the animal was out of the zoo, there was little
you could do to change it or get it back.
It’s a world that would feel both impossibly small andincomprehensibly vast to coders and software companies
today. Your workspace was limited to one server, one box,
one office. And yet your software could end up anywherein the world, on systems you couldn’t imagine. It was
impersonal. It constrained innovation. It was glacial.
Time marched on.

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WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
Product cycles started to shrink. Three years became two,
which became 18 months. Widespread access to broadband
internet and a move away from installation CDs meant thatsoftware shifted in the minds of customers and users fromsomething tangible to something digital. Updates could be
pushed to machines anywhere at any time, and customers
expected faster improvements and greater support.
Over the last decade, the 18-month product cycle hascompressed even further. Nimble startups move from idea
to viable product in less than a year. Today, no one updates
their Yahoo!, or Google, or Facebook. It just is.
Why am I taking this long view through the historyof business software?
Because we lived through it. And we thrived.

The need for speed?

OpenText now operates on a 90-day product cycle.
Our customers expect it. We go from idea to new
software in a customer’s hands in 90 days.
An idea leads to a scrum. Then, story boards, prototypes,
code, dev-sec-ops, and we push into production. That kernelof an idea is available to millions of users, globally, in lessthan three months.
We do this over and over and over again. It’s our battle
rhythm. We release 25,000 plus new facets a quarter,
live into product.
We move fast. As fast as the world around us. And we intend
to go faster and faster and faster.

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WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
If you expect a lot of breathing room in your projects or want
an environment with a team that lays plenty of runway to getthings done, OpenText may not be for you.
If you want months of time for research, testing, prototyping
and discussion, OpenText isn’t the place.
Extended development cycles cost money. If a company
isn’t delivering products for your customers every quarter,
you are not fulfilling your responsibility.
Time to value is everything.
Our next big step is to get our release cycles to every
six weeks, just like a haircut.

Be brief and be gone

We are not a company that dithers. We are not a company
that spins its wheels. We act. We produce. We will not put
our business on hold for a wild, unproven notion. We build
products that our customers need today, right now, not ninemonths from now. We believe in customer-centric innovation.
And the OpenVerse™ will only accelerate our work.
Two years from now, ninety days will seem like an eternity
as we launch new products or push updates monthly,or even weekly.
As cloud technology evolves, and as our world moves
even faster and more fully into distributed and quantum
computing, business systems will become even more
fluid than they already are.
Magnets attract and they repel. Same with people
and companies.
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WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
If none of this sounds appealing, perhaps we are not theright place for you.

You work for who?

Some companies are so closely associated with what they
do that their name becomes a generic term.
Band-Aid. Kleenex. Xerox. Specific brand name versions ofcommonplace items that have slid into common use for any
adhesive bandage, tissue or photocopier.
You can Google something. You can’t OpenText something.
But you can be an OpenTexter.
And I think that’s fantastic.
To be synonymous with one thing—even when your company
does a panoply of different things—is to be put into a box.
Sure, it can be a lucrative box, and it can even be the end
goal of a reasonable person’s business plan. But it’s not mygoal, and it’s not OpenText’s. Rather, we view the OpenVerse™
as a vast expanding space of ideas and potential.
OpenText might not be a household name, but it’s a namethat carries the weight of achievement for what we’ve done,
and that bears the trust of a huge range of people andcompanies around the world. The most trusted companies
trust OpenText, and they not only know our name, they know
who we are.
And it’s a name that has room to grow.
We are not defined by a single product, or a single industry.
We exist to evolve, and to serve the needs of the customers
who depend on us.

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WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
We are free to adapt our products as needed. We are notchained to the burden of legacy expectations. If a new
solution presents itself that will serve our customers better,
we jump at it.
We are continually expanding our view to encompass new
fields of technology, new partnerships, new acquisitions,and new possibilities. Look no further than our recent
announcement on Micro Focus.
You can’t do that when you’re a company known for only
one thing.

Cut the trappings

The tech world is notorious for substituting bells andwhistles for a humane working environment. Route 101 in
Silicon Valley has the husks of tens of thousands of deadcompanies on the side of the road.
Ping pong tables in place of work/life balance.
Paintball tournaments in place of a voice that is heard
by senior management.
We believe a workplace should be human above all else.
We ask excellence of our employees and reward it bycreating an environment that is welcoming, challenging andthat encourages real growth and development, not empty
platitudes or trinkets.
We don’t hide unreasonable expectations, impossible goals
or unfeeling leadership behind a veneer of superficial
rewards.

99

WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONEAt OpenText, we trust that every employee knows their work,
has the skills to succeed, and has great ideas to bring to our
projects. As with our belief that each OpenTexter can forge
their own path through their career, we know that brilliant
ideas can come from anywhere.
We display that trust by giving each employee—no matter
their tenure or title—the opportunity to contribute in more
ways that are defined by any one job description.
At OpenText, you get a seat at the table.

The bottom line

We all work to get paid. It’s naïve to think anything else.
We are a performance culture where we disproportionately
reward our best performers. The more you contribute,the more you can earn.
In an ideal world, we’re all paid well, commensurate to
our contribution, for doing something we find engaging,challenging and fun.
In the real world, compromises are part of life.
We’re not the biggest player on the block, but we are oneof the most differentiated, like Dr Seuss’ Thing 1 and Thing 2.
We’re not a company with a market cap in the hundredsof billions that can outmuscle its competitors for talent justwith a pay cheque. We focus on total reward.
‘Total reward’ is the intersection of four ideas:

100GROWTHTr aining , e ducat ion , car e er

WELL-BEING
F l exi bilit y , hy br id wor k , eng ag em ent wit h your pe er s
and company , and its fair n ess and equitabilit yshar ing in t h e succ ess of t h e company

R E W A R D

C ompet it ive pay , g r eat ben efits , andDOING GOOD

Socially r esponsi bl e , using t ec hnol og yfor g ood, and being climat e innovator s

T O TA LCOMPENSATION

pat hing , your own advanc em ent

WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
I can’t possibly write a piece in a book like this and promisethat our company can pay every one of our employees
the highest salary that they could potentially earn in theindustry based on the enormity of the tech industry and thedesperate fight for talent going on as we speak. You canalways seek a job with more pay in the short-term, but webelieve deeply in investing in you for the long-term.

In our view, the work iseverything and the focus
is on total reward.
What I can do is promise three things:
One: we will always do right by our employees, paying eachcontributor as best we can. The more you achieve, the more
you can earn.
Two: we will provide a culture of opportunity and openness,
giving each OpenTexter the ability to grow, explore and thrive
over the course of their entire career. And we have ample
opportunity for you to spend your entire career with us.
Three: if you choose to leave for another opportunity,
and it doesn’t fit, we’ll answer your call.
The most that many tech companies will promise you is thefirst of those three things. They will pay—overpay, even—to
get people in the door and keep them quiet, and then they
will wring every cent’s worth of joy from their employees
and slam the door behind them if they choose to walk away.

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WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
There is an arrogance to the tech industry that is unfortunate
and ingrained.
I’m not sure exactly when it started, or how it became
so widespread. But it’s there.
And that arrogance is antithetical to how we operate asa company—how I want our company to treat its people.
Other companies see money as the answer to every
problem, but I know that as necessary as money is to allof us, you can’t throw cash at every problem and expect
it to cure everything, or to make good what is broken.
You can pay people to come, but you can’t buy thecontentment that a supportive environment and gracefultreatment creates.
We offer a company, and a culture, where growth andambition are nurtured, where employees can choose
to experience new things and take on new challenges,
and where the door is always open.
A career at OpenText will ideally offer not only the fruitof being paid to exercise your skills, but the satisfactionof doing work that is itself genuinely rewarding.
In the Bhagavad Gita, there is a passage about the spiritof action and work that leads to a fulfilled spirit.
Translated, it reads:“You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you
are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider
yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities,
nor be attached to inaction.”103

WE’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE
It is about recognizing your place as part of something
bigger than yourself, and not attaching your own self-worth
to the results of your actions. If you work only towards
the material and personal benefits of what you do, youdevalue the work of others and you risk disillusionment
with whatever outcome or reward comes about.
The Gita also employs the metaphor of the Ashvattha—thetree of life. Krishna states that the tree’s true form andlifespan are unknowable in this world, but that its branches
and roots grow in infinitely complex forms where we cansee and where we cannot.
My journey through life—through business, through cancer,
through joy and through pain—has imbued in me a strong
sense of the spiritual. I have come so close to death as tofeel its grasp. As the Buddha said: “I’m not divine, I am simply
a man who is awake.” I am in no way comparing myself to
the Buddha, and I don’t claim to have all the answers,
but I do believe that I see with some clarity, and that
I see what is important to me in this life.
I truly believe that it is the work that matters, not the fruit.
As the Gita says, “if you focus on the fruits, you will be lost.”
The mission is work. The mission is knowledge. The mission
is striving to be happy, even should you live to be 99 years
old, continuing to do what you love, to build knowledge,
to be awake.
If all you’re looking for at the end of your career is anenormous pile of fruit with nothing to show and no pridein how you built that pile, then OpenText isn’t for you.

105

05
What
you’lldo
106

W e shall not c ease fr om
ex pl or at ion

And t h e end of all our
ex pl or ing

Will be to ar r ive w h er e
we star t e d

And k now t h e plac e fort h e fir st t im e .
T.S. Eliot

WHAT YOU’LL DO
OpenText is not like other companies. We are outsiders.
I hope that if nothing else, that’s been made clear by now.
We’re not the biggest name, or the flashiest tech,
but we are wicked smart, ambitious, and pick our moments.
We work to make our customers wildly successful.
We know our stuff, we achieve our goals, we live by our
principles, and we’re going somewhere big.
The OpenVerse™.
The question is: will you join us?
If you’re already an OpenText employee, are you ready
and willing to be a part of this transformation?
If you’re thinking of joining us, does this sound like a place
you could spend your career?
We are not seeking those who fit into our culture.
We are looking for those who add to our culture.

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WHAT YOU’LL DO

CHOICE

Information powers the future.
We see a future where every
company and every individual
has the ability to use information
to better their own lives.

Will you put
up walls?

OR

109

Will you help us break
down barriers?

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Leaders at all levels

Creating the OpenVerse™ will take leadership from morethan people managers or executives. It will take initiativeand engagement from every employee. It will take the mostdiverse eco-system on the planet of wicked smart designers,
architects, programmers, cloud engineers, dev-sec-ops
practitioners, implementors, customer success analysts,
threat hunters, and great marketers and salespeople!
I believe leadership is a choice, not a position. Leaders aren’t
just found at the head of the table, they come from all sides.
Every person is a leader: leader of self, leader of a team,or leader of an organization. I also believe in round meetingtables, where all ideas are debated equally.
And a true leader understands that the principles they liveby are not just for a poster above the water cooler or channel
notes in Slack. They are the way, the fundamental truths thatbind an organization together, at work, at home and at play.
At OpenText our principles are clear—you helped write themearlier in this very book. Our principles define how we treat
customers, make decisions, debate ideas, create plans,author new products, interview potential new colleagues andadvance our teammates and ourselves. They guide us as we
explore and encounter challenges and the unknown. They
provide air to lift our flight, and grounding in troubled times.
I have a plaque in my office that reads CAVU: Ceiling and
Visibility Unlimited. It means that we can clearly see the way
ahead, and that our potential is limitless. If you live by thoseprinciples, and if you can inhabit the qualities of the G-Force,
you can be a leader for yourself and for OpenText, and yourceiling and visibility will be unlimited.
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WHAT YOU’LL DO

CHOICEWe are a company of leaders.
You bring your individual voice
and a unique set of skills
to the table.

Will you stick tothe beaten path?

OR

111

Will you follow yourown inspiration?

WHAT YOU’LL DO

To the OpenVerse™, and beyond

No one knows what the future will bring. But we know the
future is made of the best parts of today. In business, andespecially in technology, planning ahead is increasingly an
impossible gambit. A five-year plan used to be the bedrockof every organization. Today, anticipating five years down
the road feels like science fiction.
Our three-year plan, the launch of the OpenVerse™, is about
embracing big change and setting the stage for the next
three decades. Cloud, LOVE, the G-Force, information
management and quantum are just the start.
We have an idea of what our world could be—what it might
be—and we are preparing ourselves to meet that possibility.
And we are also prepared to take on new directions, newchallenges and new unknowns.
We do this by remaining true to who we are.
We are a company with a bias for action. We work together
to use the information we have to make the best decisions we
can in the moment—not waiting for an invitation to act that
may never come. And once we act, we accept responsibility
for whatever outcome may fall. We don’t pass the buck.
Recall, one of our core values is: “We sweat the details.”
We’re a company that is powered by tenacity, persistence,
and above all, a driving and insatiable curiosity to know theunknown, to solve the unsolvable. We focus on the work andthe customer success. We’re a company with a commitment
to managing costs to ensure we can continue to operate at
our peak. Sometimes that means our belts and budgets area little tighter than other tech companies. This is who we are.

112

WHAT YOU’LL DO

CHOICEA strong spirit leads the way
forward. We don’t follow thecrowd in tech and don’t intend
to start now. We’re iconoclasts
and independent thinkers.

Will you bend your identity
to the whims of others?

OR

113

Will you stand resolute andbe who you are meant to be?

WHAT YOU’LL DO

The OpenText heart

The G-Force. Our values. Our purpose. Our goals.
The OpenVerse™.
We’re a global company with a Canadian soul—one ofinclusion, multi-culturalism, with a deep sense of value, andwe play hockey until the ice is pink. For those who find theirtrue place here, OpenText rewards them in return in body,spirit, mind and soul.
I’ve spent this entire book defining what makes OpenText
unique. But in reality, it isn’t a ‘what’ that makes our company
special—it’s ‘who.’
It’s the curious gamers who won’t rest until they’ve solved
the problem that’s troubling our customer.
It’s the dauntless explorer who loves going off the beaten
path to create something unique.
It’s the passionate leader who stands behind their team andpushes them to be better.
It’s the graceful colleague who steps in to lend a hand whensomeone is down.
If you are inspired by anything in this book and want to makeyour own mark, you have the OpenText heart.
If you are intrigued by the detours and puzzles in this bookand want to dive deeper, you have the OpenText heart.
If you are excited by the limitless possibilities of building
the OpenVerse™, the foundation of the world of industry andinformation that will guide our planet’s future, you definitely
have the OpenText heart.

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WHAT YOU’LL DO

CHOICEThe OpenVerse™ is waiting.
A vital new place where
information powers our lives
and helps technology andsociety evolve.

Will you stick aroundwhere it’s safe?

OR

115

Will you dive inand explore?

#GO
OPENTEXTAcknowledgements
OpenText is a team sport, and I would like to express
my deepest appreciation to these individuals whose
contribution made Versant, versant.
To the OpenText executive leadership teamfor living the OpenText way: Brian Sweeney,
Doug Parker, James McGourlay, Kristina Lengyel,
Madhu Ranganathan, Michael Acedo, Muhi Majzoub,
Paul Duggan, Prentiss Donohue, Renee McKenzie,
Sandy Ono and Ted Harrison.
To the OpenText senior leadership members
who contributed experiences and perspectives:
Rama Bhamidipaty, Lisa Boyle, John Di Leo,
Edward Kiledjian, Brian Koepsell, Joel Kremke,
Julie Millard, Michael Neiswender, Benoit Perriquet,John Radko, Geoff Schmitt and Thomas Woppmann.
To the OpenText Board of Directors, for your support,thoughtfulness and trust. To Tom Jenkins who helps
me always see the possibilities. To Gordon Davies,
my friend and consigliere.
To my friends at Stiff, who helped shape and tellthis story, and who brought its puzzles to life:
James Hanington, Anna Jackson, Liam Dynes
and Lee Pakkala.
To my amazing support team at OpenText:
Scott Schultz, Sunnie Rothenburger,
DeeDee Andrews, Mandi Browning and Franca Celli.
The greatest gift you can give someone is your time,
because when you give your time, you are providing
a portion of your life that you will never get back.

You gave me the giftof your time. Namaste.

Certain statements in this book may containwords considered forward-looking statements
or information under applicable securities laws.
These statements are based on OpenText’s current
expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections
about the operating environment, economies andmarkets in which the company operates. Thesestatements are subject to important assumptions,risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict,and the actual outcome may be materially different.
OpenText’s assumptions, although consideredreasonable by the company on the date of publishing,
may prove to be inaccurate and consequently
its actual results could differ materially fromthe expectations set out herein. For additional
information with respect to risks and other factors
which could occur, see OpenText’s Annual Report on
Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and othersecurities filings with the SEC and other securities
regulators. Unless otherwise required by applicablesecurities laws, OpenText disclaims any intention or
obligations to update or revise any forward-looking
statements, whether as a result of new information,
future events or otherwise.
Copyright © 2022 Open Text Corporation.
All Rights Reserved. Trademarks owned
by Open Text Corporation.

Answerkey
119

MAZE — PAGE 16

FinishStart
120

CIRCUIT — PAGE 31

FinishStart
121

PIZZA — PAGE 58

TOPPINGS

122

DECODE — PAGE 66

The class of bright students
was always full of ideas. It was
S a d i ea challenge for the professor
to keep up with the speed andconfidence with which the classoperated. No group of students
had ever caused the professor
to cast aside her lesson plan so
S a d i eearly in the semester—it wasa challenge to be relished. She
and her aides huddled late into
S a d i e

the night to come up with newand exciting challenges forthe group to solve.

123

CROSSWORD — PAGE 74
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What’s
next is
up to
you
126

The core values from this book and how you apply themto your life and your career will shape the OpenVerse™.
The future of OpenText is in your hands. The ideas
we’ve explored are your building blocks. In these last
pages you’ll find a central building block from eachchapter. Around them, empty space. Freedom.
What do these ideas mean to you? How will you
take them and run with them into the OpenVerse™?
Here is your blank canvas. Fill these pages to the brim.
Write. Dream. List. Draw. Rant. What will you create?

WHAT’S NEXT IS UP TO YOU

00

We have never moved
this fast, and we will nevermove this slow again.

128

WHAT’S NEXT IS UP TO YOU

01

We are gamers. With grit.
Guilds. Growth. Goals.
Gratitude. And grace.

129

WHAT’S NEXT IS UP TO YOU

02

We are innovators.
We are forged by code.
We are explorers.

130

WHAT’S NEXT IS UP TO YOU

03

Be deserving of trust.
Sweat the details. Aim high.
The unexpected “wow”. We, not I.

131

WHAT’S NEXT IS UP TO YOU

04

Magnets attract,
and they repel. Same withpeople and companies.

132

WHAT’S NEXT IS UP TO YOU

05

We are each leaders:of self, of teams,of organizations.

133