Thinking about leadership

The orchestral conductor, Benjamin Zander, is a frequent business speaker and famous for his TED talk. now viewed by more than eight million people.  Conductors are sometimes viewed as the last of the great dictators.  Zander is different.  He had an epiphany some years ago when he realized that the conductor of an orchestra is has a different role.

The insight transformed his conducting and his orchestral musicians immediately noticed the difference.  Now he’s a leader who asks for input in the form of written comments at every rehearsal.  He understands that the musicians’ skills and experience enhance his own. 

His gifts as a teacher are remarkable too and they are now shared through masterclasses for all of us on YouTube.  The students perform with technical brilliance before he enters in with a consistent message –  it is time to relax and let go of the kind of competitive excellence their preparatory training has provided and instead relate to their audience.  Transformation happens before our own shining eyes.

His passion is for introducing classical music to audiences unfamiliar with it and he does so with incredible skill and experience in connection.  It’s worth seeing him in action. 

The TED talk is one of the most viewed ever.  A recent PBS programme showed another conductor showing a group of medical professionals how musicians work together to produce a unified and effective result. It's ironic when the arts and humanities are treated with with a condescending tone these days that their strengths are nevertheless cited as the direction in which we need to move.

You can watch the recent PBS clip here.

And the Zander tape is well worth your time.

Family Retreat - A Literary Summary

The Setting

The beautiful Pleasant Bay House in Hillier close to several wineries in Prince Edward County - a mini-Sonoma or Niagara Peninsula converted from a farming and lake recreation area to a more sophisticated network of wineries, restaurants and inns.  Two and a half hours from metro Toronto makes it an easy trip.

The Cast of Characters

Three generations - a widowed grandmother and her two sons and their families and two dogs - but with a backstory that means it is a truly modern three generation family.

The grandmother has been a widow for 12+ years - after remarrying the same husband for the second time. The oldest son is also divorced and happily remarried as is his wife. Their children are her son, 21, and their daughter, 13. The second son's wife died more than six years ago and he is joined by his two sons 13 and 10 and his partner of several years. The oldest son's dog is 10 years old and slowing down.  The youngest son's puppy is seven+ months and speeding up.

The Theme - Family Togetherness.

The Plot:

Leaving taking was delayed by a lost wallet and after a fruitless hunt we headed for the crowded superhighway with the hope that a later phone call would reveal that it was left in the pub the night before.  It was. The boring highway was livened by NPR reruns though the cold winter landscape was beautiful. GPS didn't like the location name and insisted it was elsewhere but Google maps showed us the way.   We overshot the house and a sharp turn to come back meant a slide into a snow covered ditch - just as the wide snow plow was approaching. Everything ground to a halt but freeing it was not on. Luckily a pickup truck arrived, went back and brought the tractor to haul it out. The snow plow man didn't mind at all since he was paid by the hour, as he reminded us several times.  We sat down a little late to homemade lasagna and explored the new home environment.

The house was magic - with its glass door wood stove, copious living room windows that let in the bright sunlight of the 19 below zero cold day.  some braver scond generation souls departed to stock the already over-flowing larder while the senior and younger set settled in for an introduction to The Settlers of Catan - the perfect game for the place.  Later we sat down for tacos, newly purchased wine, a word game and another round of Catan.  The two dogs fought for attention and all the benches had to be pushed in to keep the puppy off the dining room table.  The beds soon beckoned with their duvet covers that even allowed us to depart from the slow burning fire.

After breakfast bagels, the next morning started slowly.  More eyes were focused on familiar screens than on the beautiful views - thought the grandmother and the two boys didn't participate - the first because it was a deliberate choice and the second because they were deprived of them.  New participants were introduced to Catan.  A tourtiere for lunch and another winery visit happened.  Supper consisted of an eclectic assortment of leftovers with more word games and one last round of Catan - with lots of reading of  real books by the non participants. After many ins and outs and opening of doors that let in the chill, even the dogs snoozed.

Morning breakfast was Spanish - Huevos - with Mimosas for the adults just to finish off the leftovers. Then it was time to clean up and pack.  One car departed for Toronto with the other stopping to visit with friends - but not before the family tried to capture the puppy who resisted being put on a leash..  Maybe it is still running there.  An uneventful ride merged into snow squalls as we hit the city.  

The outcome - Excellent.  I can remember family gatherings full of arguments and too much discussion and drinking, fights among siblings, too much of everything.  All the drama this time was provided by the dogs!  

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.