Bill Clinton and Event-Making Leadership

Bill Clinton can get a conversation stared. Using his signature ability to elegantly repackage complex issues, he told an audience of over 2000 at the UNB Aitken Centre yesterday that developed countries suffer from tired, strained, and stubborn systems (think of our challenges in healthcare, education, political and economic development). They must be reformed, he said, if we are to unleash future prosperity.

What does this mean for NB? How can we take his insights and act smarter? This was the purpose of an event we called, “Dissecting Clinton,” that 21inc hosted in partnership with the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce. About 40 people joined us for a wide-ranging talk at Windsor Castle Bar.

We trotted through familiar territory before entering new ground. Many people lamented that change in NB seemingly takes forever, even when we all know the current system is broken. We discussed how our tired, strained and stubborn systems encourage anti-change behavior.

This led to a discussion on the role of leadership in fostering change. Looking to a messiah or hero isn’t sustainable. Once that person stops, so does the change. How do we create different models of leadership?

Larry Sampson, Executive Director of the NB ICT Council and one of our guest “instigators,” said his belief is that NB (and I’d argue the rest of the Maritimes) needs an event to make the right conditions for change. This is Rahm Emmanuel’s dictum. The former Chief of Staff to Obama channeled a Chinese proverb when he said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

But do events or crisis always need to be external? Can we create our own conditions?

Sidney Hook calls leadership that transforms “event-making.” Most leaders are “eventful.” That is, they “shape the course of events, but their contributions could easily be replicated by others.” The little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike was an “eventful” actor because he prevented a flood that would have destroyed his community; but virtually anyone in the same situation could have acted as he did.

Event-making leaders change the course of history because of personal qualities they bring to the situation (and not always in desirable ways). Under Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership, the United States became a world power and an emerging welfare state. “Without him,” writes Nan Keohane in her book, Thinking about Leadership, “American history would have been different and not just in its details but in its larger contours.” Roosevelt, was an “event-making” leader because his actions created consequences through his outstanding capacities of intelligence, will, and character rather than accidents of position.

I agree that New Brunswick can’t rely on a messiah. That’s part of our problem; our culture seems dependent on this as an answer. It’s like the person who who believes that their retirement funding will come by winning the lottery. But nor can we afford to wait for an outside event. We need event-making leadership at all levels. And these event-making leaders need to put in place the effective, sustainable, and adaptive systems to carry on when their work

Getting Government to Innovate

Readers of this blog know that I’m into social innovation, which is simply improving the way we tackle public challenges.

Last week, Tim Draimin, the Executive Director of SIG, tweeted that the world’s leading social innovator, Christian Bason, was coming to Toronto. I had no idea who this Bason guy was and why he’d be regarded by one of Canada’s leading social innovators as the world’s best.

It takes Google 0.17 seconds to return more than 110,000 hits bearing his name. It’s not hard to learn about him. And the more I looked, the more I realized what he does is needed our region.

Bason leads MindLab, a “cross-ministerial” research centre that involves business, citizens, and government to find creative solutions for society. It’s an incubator inside government focused on delivering new ideas, and housed in a gorgeous building. Which no doubt is an inspiring place to do their work.

Their work has helped retain foreign workers, reduced red tape through a citizen’s perspective (with a focus on young people), combined workplace safety with mentoring, and developed a business led climate change strategy.

At last week's panel on Governing New Brunswick, it was shown that our system puts up almost insurmountable barriers to doing the work that's needed. The province's fiscal situation fosters more conservative behavior, despite the need for innovation and creativity. From conversations in the other Maritime Provinces, this is true throughout.

A MindLab type organization on a regional scale could be our anecdote.

Can we be too happy?

Can we be too happy?

I asked this question on the closing panel of the Ignite Leadership Conference at St. Mary’s University. It was in response to another panelist lamenting how much Haligonians (and I’d argue, Atlantic Canadians) spend whining about the state of things. In fact, this panelists said, we have much to celebrate.

This is true. One of those things should be our high scores on a slew of happiness rankings. A key indicator behind these happiness indicators is the strength of one’s relationships. Atlantic Canada is well known for strong ties, so it shouldn’t be surprising that we rank particularly high.

But we don’t rank high on a host of other issues that also matter – education, health, innovation, business starts. We’re close to, if not at, the bottom.

Recently Jim Meek wrote a piece in Progress Magazine about the dark side of happiness - being happy may lead to complacency. If one is happy, why change? Why stick your nick out and maybe fail if life is good? As another panelist said yesterday, Halifax seems to have a lot of people devoted to the status quo.

Many of the young leaders going through our programs have tapped into wells of motivation by recognizing how their efforts make a real difference against these challenges. Whether that’s through starting a business, adapting one’s behavior and getting better results, or working with their mentor on a particular challenge, achieving one’s goal brought satisfaction.

This isn’t a post against happiness –I wish everyone supportive families, friends, and community. But we can’t be blind either. When our leaders become more willing and able to do something about the challenges before them, that makes me happy.

Guest Blog Post: Jeff Sparks on 11 Minutes/11 Muscles

As a 21 Inc. alumni, member of the 21 Inc. Board, and person with a neuromuscular disorder, I am very excited to attend 11 Minutes/11 Muscles. This is an event conceived and organized by students in UNB's MBA professional development class to support Muscular Dystrophy Canada (MDC) and modeled after the inspirational TED event.

Through attending this event you will have the opportunity to hear from some amazing speakers, while making a difference in the lives of those with neuromuscular disorders. 11 Minutes/11 Muscles will feature the Honourable Graydon Nicholas, Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick; Freeman Patterson, photographer and writer; Rachel Pulfer, international program director, Journalists for Human Rights; Stanton T. Friedman, physicist and ufologist; Brian Duplessis, executive director, United Way; and David Adams Richards, author, playwright and Saint Thomas University writer-in-residence.

Funds raised from the event will support the programs and services of Muscular Dystrophy Canada including. Where do the funds go? Here's a personal example: My new wheelchair cost $45,000. Purchased with support from MD Canada, it allows me to live an amazing quality of life and contribute to our communities through the work of great organizations like 21 Inc.

Hope to see you on April 1st.

Ideas Festival videos

Over the last couple months we've been working with Hemmings House Pictures to produce a few videos of the Ideas Festival. We're really happy with the results - they capture the energy and opportunities created by the Festival. I'll be posting English, French, and bilingual videos up here over the next week. Below is the bilingual trailer, a mash up of some of the best quotes and interviews from the 2010 Festival.

Entrepreneurial Purpose-Driven Education

Came across a video this morning of Bruce Mau, the well known designer and planner talking about his Center for Massive Change. Much of this is very resonant with where 21inc is going. Like the Center, we're developing a "methodology and expertise to be constantly innovative, to deal with challenges that will emerge in the future." We're focused on building a community of "entrepreneurial learners." Because change is happening so fast, people need to know how to "explore possibilities as they're evolving."

His analogy about being lost in the forest is brilliant and incredibly relevant to Atlantic Canada. I may "borrow" it.

Making Models

Our quarterly board meeting is this Saturday and it's more anticipated than usual. (Aren't board meetings always hotly anticipated??)

I've been devouring the book, Business Model Generation, over the past few weeks. Unlike most business books, this one is useful. Very. A business model is a description of how an organization creates, captures and deliver value. BMG shows how a combination of nine building blocks (eg. value proposition, key activities, customers) that all organizations have work interdependently to create, capture, and deliver value.

On Saturday we're developing the 21inc business model. We do each of the building blocks to some extent. Some better than others. But we've never put them together and see where we need to focus for future success and sustainability. There's so many benefits from doing this, including understanding where we need systems, what we should stop doing, and where we need to double down.

The picture above is from our practice session (prototyping for the design thinkers out there) with the Executive Committee this Monday.

Mission creep, or something else?

Mission creep is infamous in the not-for-profit world. It’s when an organization does a project outside its mission. Because budgets are tight and most of us run project to project, you do the project because you need money. In the process the organization dilutes who it is and weakens the brand.

But what if taking on different projects isn’t mission creep. What if instead it’s part of every organization’s evolving identity? That’s the question I’ve been playing with over the last week, particularly after a recent lunch meeting in Saint John.

Lately we’re being asked to consider and increasing amount of projects with the goals of enabling policy change. We usually say no. Our work focuses on developing the best leaders in Canada by building hard and soft skills, and knowledge of the context in which those skills are applied. Policy isn’t what we do and only tempts mission creep. That’s what I used to think.

I’m now wondering if 21inc can pursue its mission – to develop and inspire Atlantic Canada’s new and emerging leaders – with greater impact by not only using our programs to develop skills and knowledge, but also further create opportunities to exercise leadership. Our growing alumni, now at 118, have told us they’d like opportunities to influence the direction our provinces and region are taking.

The Aspen Institute in the United States does this. They’ve always been a model for us and maybe this is the road they took. Even if we eventually follow them, we still need to walk it ourselves.

2010 Reflections

It’s not my habit to spend much time looking backwards. True to form, for the last month, since the Emerging Leaders Summit and Ideas Festival in November, 21inc’s Board of Directors and I have been thinking about 2011-2014. But unable to sleep last night because of a stupid decision to drink a late coffee, I found myself lying in bed reflecting on 2010. Some of you might be interested in this, so below are my top three highs and lows of 2010.

2010 Highs

Atlantic Programs

No question, our biggest high of 2010 was the launch and successful execution of our first regional leadership experience. It started in the fall of 2009 when discussions began with the Government of Nova Scotia about what 21inc does. There was much interest and more stakeholders were brought to the conversation. We approached several of our partners, including ACOA, Scotiabank, Colour, Emera , Stewart McKelvey, and Ernst & Young, who all saw real value in a regional approach. With each Atlantic Province committed as a partner, the Emerging Leaders Summit was launched in June. The results were excellent. Working with our alumni across the region in 2011 is going to be a blast.

The Ideas Festival was also a highlight. This was our second Festival, which happens every two years. My colleague and co-conspirator Julie Breau told me after the Festival that a part of her wanted to know if the success of the first one was luck. It wasn’t. Pamela Scott Crace of Progress Magazine said she “loved” the inaugural Festival and didn’t know how we could top that. Her answer was we did, “by a lot.” I’m most proud of the greater regional representation and increased French content of the 2010 Festival. And the limbo contest.

Partnerships

Partnerships aren’t easy and we learned that this year. I guess we always knew it, but from now on we’ll enter partnerships having earned an education from the school of hard knocks.

Board changes

We spent the summer drafting policy, creating systems and updating the board structure. We added new members and for the first time, recruited them from outside the alumni. We still need to put some specifics to the systems and add two more members, but the momentum 21inc is experiencing at the board level is very positive.

2010 21 Leaders program

Our second 21 Leaders cohort graduated in May in Bathurst. They are an inspiring group. Two companies were started, several of the Leaders found placements on prestigious boards. And NB Debates was formed out of the Community Solutions Projects.

2010 Lows

Partnerships

This is both a high and a low. The highs are the lessons learned. The lows were the pain endured while learning those lessons.

Workload

It never gets lower. Murphy must have a law about this. Hire people, gain experience, purchase fancy tools, and enter into partnerships: new work displaces the old.

Noah Augustine

Canada lost a significant leader when Noah Augustine died in a car accident this fall. Noah was a big supporter of 21inc and met with the 2009 cohort. I was cleaning out my inbox over the Christmas holidays and found an email correspondence we had just one week before he passed. His shoes will be difficult to fill.

Le marché des idées

Le concept du Marché des idées est en quelque sorte un babillard interactif, en format papier.

Vendredi soir, les participants ont eu la chance de partager sur une feuille de papier les projets qu'ils veulent réaliser et les ressources dont ils ont besoin pour les accomplir.

Cela veut dire qu'il y a environ 200 différents projets et idées que les participants peuvent lire et remuer leurs méninges. Imaginez les possibilités! De cette façon, les gens peuvent faire la lecture des projets et s'ils se sentent interpelés ou capables de donner un coup de main, les coordonnées sont indiquées.

Partagez vos projets, et les ressources dont vous avez besoin pour les réaliser dans les commentaires.

-Mélissa Cormier, bénévole 21inc.

WestJet Ideas Festival Contest

Win 2 tickets to ANYWHERE WestJet flies!!All you have to do is enter 1 idea that you think can move Atlantic Canada forward.Enter your idea as a comment to this discussion. Please enter your name when you post your idea. We will draw 1 person from the top 10 ideas!We will draw for the tickets tonight at the soiree. Dont miss it!

Power to the People

Do we have a different kind of power when we exist in a network? Mark Kuznicki, founder of ChangeCamp posed this question in the Kick-Off Event of the 2010 Ideas Festival, and taking a look around the room, I'd say yes. Yes, because there is power in the in the diversity of individuals gathered here - a power of resilience. The festival has brought together people who have been making change for decades and those who have been making change for days; people who have founded numerous initiatives and people who are preparing to launch their first; people who have realized many ideas and people whose ideas are beginning to emerge in different sectors across Canada. They are all gathered here together. They are learning, mentoring, questioning, and acting. They are changing the future of this country, but more importantly, this country today. And the resilience inherent in this group means that these ideas are here to stay.

Bring on Day 2!

Y Vote

Pure greatness. That’s what I think of what I hope will be the most important video of the NB general election. The release was last night in Moncton and is now up on Youtube. The number of views is going up and up.

The model for the video was one put together by Leonardo DiCaprio and friends during the 2008 US general election called 5 friends. Brian Gallant and Dan Gillis gathered a stellar cast of New Brunswickers to be part of the video. Despite having Bernard Lord, John McLaughlin, Lisa Merrithew, Dominic Leblanc and other prominent NBers, the younger stars stole the show.

Most importantly, the message is clear. The fundamental reason our political leaders don’t make needed and hard decisions on the economy, the environment and a litany of other issues is because no constituency supports them. We need to demand that the issues we care about be heard and VOTE for it.

Lets make this election different.

Go vote. Vas voter.

Public Intellectual

Melissa Wah, a Jill of all trades at 21inc, is making her first guest appearance on the Spin Reduxit podcast, Friday afternoon in Saint John.

As CBC reporter and podcast host Jacques Poitras writes on their blog, announcing the occasion,

Spin Reduxit loyalists in the Saint John area are invited to our very first, and altogether experimental, "live" podcast, which we will record this Fri., Aug. 13, at the City Market.

Daniel McHardie and I will be at the Java Moose Coffee location at the market from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. to record an extended Spin Reduxit podcast. We're inviting three engaged, civic-minded New Brunswickers to join us for our discussion: urban activist Kurt Peacock, lawyer and former Saint John Board of Trade chair Nathalie Godbout, and Melissa Wah, a recent St. Thomas University grad who's working for 21inc, the youth leadership program.

Be sure to download the podcast next week.

An Overwhelming Response

Anyone leading a company or nonprofit will tell you that life is a series of highs and lows. Things are rocking one minute with everyone saying yes. Then the next minute that light shining at the end of the tunnel is sold by a competitor.

The past five weeks of collecting nominations for the Emerging Leaders Summit has been a big high. The Summit is our first program beyond New Brunswick to Atlantic Canada and we’ve been overwhelmed with the response. We’re still finalizing numbers but the quality and diversity of leaders and entrepreneurs nominated can’t help but infuse us with confidence about the amazing leaders in our midst.

It also raises the bar for us as we finish the design of the Summit and Ideas Festival, making sure it’s a powerful experience. That’s nothing but a good thing.

The Leadership We Need

The New Brunswick news has been rightly focused on the death of Jack Irving. As one of K.C.’s three sons, his leadership in business and the community made an indelible and positive mark on the province and region. David Ganong told the Telegraph Journal that “he left a huge mark. He made enormous investments and created a huge number of jobs.”

David’s comment got me thinking -- what qualities do our leaders need to leave a huge mark? The impacts made by Mr. Irving no doubt qualify him for the “huge mark” title, but are there others?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Given our challenges like demographics, low entrepreneurship rates and education scores, or our incoming health care apocalypse, what kind of leadership do we need to solve them and how can we (as a society and as an organization) encourage this?

These were the questions swimming in my mind while reading “Measures of Leadership,” from the current issue of strategy + business. The study looked at leaders in the Gulf Cooperation Council (defined by Wikipedia as a political and economic organization involving the six Arab states of the Persian Gulf with many economic and social objectives) and what leadership qualities were helping them modernize and develop their region.

Those qualities are:

• Farsighted vision: A long-term outlook that recognizes the importance of building sustainable institutions for future generations.

• Pragmatic openness: A willingness to seek ideas from around the world and customize them for the GCC’s unique circumstances.

• Conscious presence: A recognition of the fact that the GCC’s leaders are not just building their own organizations but also acting in concert to establish the region as a global player.

If we change GCC to Atlantic Canada, how do we fare? I don’t know. Clearly our titans of industry are thinking about these, particularly Farsighted Vision, as they build companies into sustainable institutions. J.D. Irving’s becoming the biggest private sector consumer of IT in New Brunswick is a good example.

What about Conscious Presence? Have we been building the institutions and infrastructure to encourage action that can help our communities and organizations thrive globally over the long term? For sure we're trying, but only time will tell if we succeeded.

Nancy Mathis

One of 21inc's partners interviews another in the Telegraph Journal this morning. Dave Veale, CEO of Vision Coaching, has a series interviewing key leaders in the community and he subjects Nancy Mathis, Executive Director of the Wallace McCain Institute, to his questioning. It's a really good piece. Nancy is an inspiration.

"Everything that happens to us informs our future - good and bad. You probably learn more if things don't go the way they're supposed to go, according to your design. You learn more and that makes you stronger and smarter for the next thing you plan to do, as long as you keep moving forward."

Thinking and Doing in Realtime

I spoke today with Kanika Gupta, founder of Nukoko, who is completing a masters degree at UVic on the challenges young people face starting social enterprises. The research will inform a guidebook she's creating for young people interested in getting into this line of business.

After our conversation she asked what advice I would give after the experiences with 21inc. This is always an uncomfortable question. We learn so much everyday, who are we to give advice? I asked if anything from our conversation struck her as unique and could be beneficial for others to learn from.

She spoke about how much thinking we have done and continue to do on the vision and structure of 21inc, and the positive change that resulted. That was interesting to hear and probably because we’ve got a bunch of over educated people in leadership positions.

But also because we never looked at our evaluations, our governance decisions, event brain-dumps and debriefs, advisory network, and the 18 months from 2006 to 2007 exploring what 21inc should do as anything except what needed to be done. Thinking and doing at the same time is not optional.

Have we always made the right decision as a result of that thinking? Definitely not. Do we always ask ourselves the right questions? No again. So what have we received from this thought work (aside from several headaches)? Intentionality in our actions, a larger network of friends, an understanding of our market, more targeted programming to achieve desired outcomes, and commitment to given directions. And an understanding from experience that improvement is never over.

I’m looking forward to reading the results and how they fit into the bigger picture.

Power

We hosted a conversation this morning with respected and experienced leadership development experts. We were discussing pieces of the Emerging Leaders Summit when one asked, “how are you looking at the issue of power?”

Power is fundamental to leadership. And our research into leadership programs shows that it’s rarely made explicit to understand how we use it.

Paul Theriault, VP Human Resources at NB Power was there and started talking about the old TV show Dallas. During one classic scene, Jock Ewing, the head of the Ewing Oil company, loses it with his upstanding and ethical son Bobby when he tells him “you are never given power, you take power.”

There's a bit of time still open for a challenging conversation and we discussed what an exploration into power might look like at the Summit. For example, invite someone to join us who has had a rich life taking power and, importantly, having it taken away. Or maybe tools are developed to better understand how we exploit it -- or not.

Photos with the Premiers

It week was a good week for 21inc. Our partners (Scotiabank, Emera, Knightsbridge Robertson Surrette) were able to join us as we promoted the Emerging Leaders Summit with two Atlantic Premiers. Here are some photos: