Reunion

Some of the Interlog Alumni posed for a picture at the Artful Dodger

A text came through earlier in the week.  A crowd from the  early internet service provider of the nineties, Interlog, was gathering at their old hangout - The Artful Dodger - a Toronto downtown pub. Would I like to drop by.  Some of them were colleagues of my second son who died more than a year ago and 18 of them had turned out for his visitation and memorial service.  I thought I should go.

The company was founded in 1995 by a young man who had just turned twenty and who had little respect from venture capitalists. such as they were then.  It helped when he brought an older brother on board who had just graduated from law school.  They rented space in an office building and kept renting more as their business grew and more hardware was required.  The workforce was young, new to the field of technology and experiencing difficulty in being hired for any job, let alone ones relating to their recent education.  

There were some smart decisions made by the owners.  Digital natives will have no recollection of how exciting it was to sign up for internet service in 1995.  Those customers were pleasant to deal with.  Once they signed up though, they often had problems and were frustrated and cranky when they called in.  The same tech support group handled both so they had a mixed diet of callers.  Any customer had an online file that all could see so that the "Oh no, not this one again" could be responded to with courtesy and care.

The company was so successful that it grew to 125 employees and attracted buyers. Suddenly there was a takeover and the workers were terminated.  The company that purchased Interlog soon went under.  But rather than reacting negatively the young workers all moved on Some now found the jobs they had been looking for in the first place in fields like the arts and education and have done just fine.  Others stayed in tech and used their knowledge to thrive.  After becoming bored with flying lessons, the young owner formed and sold two more companies.  He wasn't there last night - and his name didn't come up.

What's impressive is the loyalty to one another that former employees have retained.  Some were there  from other countries, other parts of Canada and other cities.  How many work places could gather that amount of enthusiasm for a get-together three days before Christmas - twenty years later?  In a world where there is so much negativity about the work place, this gang is a standout.

Skills versus Jobs

There is a good article in today's Globe and Mail by the president and CEO of Royal Bank of Canada on a topic that is good reading for any parent - and a worthwile reflection for any of us who have to deal with both skills and jobs.

When I was finishing university, and trying to choose whether to continue with graduate work in English language and literature or become a secondary school teacher, my father's advice was "Be a teacher.  You'll never make much money but you'll always have a job".  As it turned out he was wrong on both counts.

My father was someone worth listening to in terms of his own career.  His own father died in 1916 when he was only 16 and the last child of a large family.  He went to work in the munitions plant in the nearly town of Nobel and dreamed of becoming a chemist like his brother-in-law, but also felt responsible for helping his mother financially.  Good at math, he became the town clerk of Parry Sound in his 20's and later the City Treasurer in Kitchener, then a mid sized industrial city.  With its twin city, Waterloo, the pair were home to several Canadian insurance companies and he was recruited to join one of them as assistant general manager as its 13th employee.  From there he went on to become general manager,  president and CEO and ultimately chairman of the board. 

I did become a secondary school teacher and married soon after., abandoning the dream of going to Yale. Over the next 20 years, we had four children and I also had several teaching jobs - and of course became redundant when the high school student population evaporated, because I had not stayed with the same school board but had moved and taught in several communities. 

Like many of my contemporary out-of-work teachers, I became an arts administrator in an era when there was no professional accreditation for such a job.  "We used to ask our colleages, "So what did you used to teach?"  All we knew was how to organize and be ready for whatever happened tomorrow.  We were mentored by colleagues who had done it longer and over the next decade universities woke up and created MBAs in Arts Management.  I was soon redundant again but not unhappy about it -  this time I took some additional skills along learned on the job - writing, editing, fundraising, conference planning, touring, concert production - all learned in depth over eight years.

They were useful in the next "job" which was actually a series of consulting projects involving creation of new arts facilities - finding the financial resources to make them happen, building the governance and operating structures, marketing - and assessing feasibility and operating plans.  But since these were not "jobs" but contracts, I also became a software vendor of a tool that mapped and organized ideas and plans.  This made me work more in the digital as well as the real world and I still feel quite bi-cultural - even though the new digital wolrd is both exciting and daunting.

AI and the Internet of Things have been around for a while and if Globe readers are just waking up to them, they are in trouble.  Like me, two of my working sons have had several disruptive careers rather than jobs -  another still continues to teach at a university, though not in the field he pursued at a graduate level.   There will be lots of work going forward - but not the secure job that leads to be chairman of the board. 

The Globe's writer cites a collection of "C" words - critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, core skills, competency - as the skills for today and tomorrow in the changing landscape.  Acquiring these starts long before people enter the workplace.   I'm glad that RBC is starting :Future Launch" that omits the resume and will actually pay interns.  But creating work in future generations starts with how we embody attitudes toward about whatever our age and stage. The kids will be all right if they have good mentors.

Models we like

All of us have been exposed to models as a way to summarize ideas and we like to examine and use them to spark new models and ideas.  This one, showing preferred thinking styles, was developed by Ned Herrmann while he was manager of Management of Education at General Electric. It is one of our essentials.

As you can see, the model has four quadrants showing thinking style preferences. We all use some of these in situations that require them – no one scores zero on any of them –  all of us use all of the styles – but influenced by both nature and nurture, most of us develop preferences for some quadrants more than others and use them to a greater degree, while ignoring or downplaying the others.  Under pressure, preferred styles often become even more dominant.

What we too often ascribe to personality differences in the workplace relates instead to difference in thinking preferences. Understanding the characteristics – as well as developing respect for the values that each quadrant contributes –  allows people to work together more creatively and produce better results through increased understanding of how all people think – not just ourselves.

As an assessment tool the HBDI(R)  measures the preferences of each style quantitatively by creating a kite shape on top of the model.  It’s a versatile model in that it can be used for both individual and group assessment.  As a certified practitioner, I have used the device with hundreds of clients and in retirement remain an evangelist. My respect for it is based on countless validation studies as well as the positive feedback from those whom I have assessed.  Hundreds of the largest corporations use the assessment, and individuals can too by contacting Herrmann Solutions.  You will hear more about the HBDI here from time to time.

Lessons

II have recently restarted piano lessons - after an interval since the last one of about 66 years.

It's not that I can't play already.  I do regularly - even in public but what I am doing mainly is playing by ear.  I wanted to be able to read music notation better as well as receiving some direction.  Lessons and practising have changed.

Since I live in an apartment, I practise on an electronic Roland instrument using headphones.  It does have the required 88 keys and fewer bells and whistles than many electronic keyboards but its grand piano sound and action is quite presentable. Lessons follow the same format in the group.  We play along with the teacher who said "I learned never to ask anyone to play live because when I do they just quit." My fellow students have been with her for five or six years as beginners and they are now in the Royal Conservatory's Grade Five to Seven range.  In the class the speed they prefer is much slower than mine, but as I play along I can check the accuracy and other stylistic issues.

I also like the comments that an instructor can make to adults with wider life experience and understanding. Maybe similar instruction was given to me as a child but it didn't sink in.  

I like the fact that I am playing on  digital piano - while above me is written notation from the page of a very old psalter or two.  It unites the two musical worlds. There is no audience other than my own.  It's not so much the proficiency of the playing.  It's hearing what the composer intended and reaching even a tiny element of the beauty of that.

Leadership

Some months ago I attended a meeting relating to the roll out of a strategic plan. The agenda was  to review the requirements for leadership and leadership training.  The context was for a mainline church denomination but some of the discussion could apply more broadly.

Several participants had been asked to research and bring  leadership concepts and common key words emerged for leadership roles.  Words like “mediating”, “perfecting”,  offering” and “blessing” appeared in one report.  In another the author had been fond of the letter “C” – and used nouns like “character”, “calling”, “competence” and “community”.  “Servant” leadership was also on the table.   My key words echoed some of the others – “disicipline”, “humility” and  “learner”.  I was also strong on “collaboration” rather than “hierarchy” even though we are still working within a hierarchical structure. But leader still assumes followers and someone has to take the first step.

The most interesting submission was a summary of a work by Ed Friedman entitled A Failure of Nerve. The writer of the summary had limited himself to 500 words and boiled down the role of the leader to a non-anxious presence.  We spent little time on Friedman’s idea in the meeting, but I had read his book some years before and its mention whetted my appetite to return to it.

Failure of Nerve  was compiled after Firedman’s death in 1996 by his daughter and students and has been recently reissued.  It is timely. Friedman was a rabbi and psychotherapist by training and as well as founding a successful congregation he served as advisor to six US presidents as well as to many senior church leaders and individual clients. Even before his death he saw that America in the nineties had become a frightened society, fearing change and seeking safety as opposed to the spirit of adventure of its early explorers and founders.  He’s strongly critical of this stance and challenges us to change our mental models.

Friedman is often caustic and witty – and several readers have collected maxims that represent the substance of his thinking.  Here are some that apply to leadership:

• Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.

• ‘no good deed goes unpunished; chronic criticism is, if anything, often a sign that the leader is functioning better! Vision is not enough.

• Leaders need “… to focus first on their own integrity and on the nature of their own presence rather than through techniques for manipulating or motivating others.”

• Leadership through self-differentiation is not easy; learning techniques and imbibing data are far easier. Nor is striving or achieving success as a leader without pain: there is the pain of isolation, the pain of loneliness, the pain of personal attacks, the pain of losing friends. That’s what leadership is all about.here

Much of where Friedman is coming from is defining church congregations and enterprise units as  family systems, a concept developed fully by therapist Murray Bowen. It posits that we call rational  in congregations and enterprises is always framed by the emotional responses learned in our personal birth and extended families.  Those families and tribes, like all systems, seek equilibrium.  When things get tense, it’s likely that learned behavior in earlier systems are in play.  When things are going well, Friedman says, expect sabotage.

The remedy is for the leader to develop self-differentiation rather than to try to persuade or motivate others to change.If a non-anxious presence is required it assumes there is already anxiety and conflict in the room.  But it is working on one’s own development that allows others to learn by example – and take responsibility for their own development.

Here's a brilliant brief video of Friedman's work: