Category Archives: Extraordinary

Leading the way

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Leadership styles rise and fall in popularity with ‎the issues of the day, competitive influences, and evolving organizational priorities. There are the decisive, get-the-job-done-no-matter-what types, who charge forward and sometimes leave people feeling invisible or bewildered. Their opposites espouse a let’s-take-our-time-and-keep-talking-and-talking-and talking-about-this-change approach, sometimes losing sight of task completion. There are also the neck-deep-in-the-weeds types, who focus so much on detail that the bigger picture is lost. I once heard someone complain about this leadership style, declaring with exasperation, “Forest, trees, needles. They are always in the needles!”

Visionary leaders excite and inspire hard work as long as people share at least some of their enthusiasm and their vision is clearly articulated. By definition, visionary leaders think outside the confines of the current state, but they often have to wait for others to catch up. Patience and fortitude are required to bring visionary thinking to fruition.

There is another kind of leader who can be a great asset to them: the innovative pragmatist. They’re usually found a few tiers down on the organizational chart as managers or team leads, and help visionary leaders achieve their goals by translating them into tangible, step-by-step results that lay tracks toward the new. Innovative pragmatists know how to maneuver effectively within the evolving current state and its sometimes scarce resources. They are creative and solutions-oriented, with the ability to motivate on-the-ground teams to support a changing corporate agenda.‎ They find better ways of doing things through incremental improvements that form the longer journey.

Organizational change – especially the transformational kind – cannot happen overnight. It takes planning, design and execution, with many course corrections along the way. Innovative pragmatists are the human equivalent of GPS: they know how to navigate the daily challenges and continue moving forward, rerouting plans as necessary. They also engage others in determining how to get from point-A to point-B and all of the other milestones along the way, ensuring everyone has a vested interest in reaching the destination.

When innovative pragmatists ascend the corporate ladder, the momentum they create goes with them. Like their visionary leader colleagues, they are capable of imagining ‎a better future state. Further, they know how to divine the path that leads from ‘here and now’ to ‘there and then.’ While they might not always captivate with the most glittery of ideas, they provide something no less inspirational: the strategic foresight that drives productivity and sustainable change.

Tell me a story…

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Tell me a story graphic

What’s old is new again

Storytelling has been around forever, and is at the heart of cultural traditions. It informs, connects and entertains. It has become very popular for everything from corporate communications to marketing. Storytelling isn’t just about words, but a variety of multimedia elements that, taken together, evoke, incent or inspire.

But we are drowning in content
Content is everywhere: the Internet made everyone an author/philosopher, but it didn’t make everyone a good writer. “Content curation” helps to sift through the voluminous mayhem, but curation is not a cure. How many times have you been hooked by a provocative title or headline only to find the content that follows unimaginative or unintelligible?

Shock, awe and ambiguity
Edginess often replaces creative and thoughtful content as a means to stand out from the crowd. But if nothing shocks or surprises us anymore, how can we similarly be delighted? Even the most dramatic language will eventually attract ambiguity. Just as “urgent” has lost its urgency, the extreme is becoming less extraordinary. The many messengers create further noise that first beckons our attention and then quickly loses it. Ambiguity (and the tolerance of it) is robbing us of delight through its sameness and saturation.

So what do we do?
We work at it! The formula for cutting through the clutter and creating effective communications isn’t a big mystery, but it takes serious effort. Too much detail in a world of short attention spans will lose your audience, but you have to paint a picture and help them connect the dots: facilitate. Plain language is more accessible – for EVERYONE. Skip the academic or corporate jargon. And stop spoon-feeding with detail. Remember Hemingway? Stimulate the imagination…

Creating a narrative that resonates

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…for an affective response
To be effective, you need to be affective as well. This is especially important for building narratives, regardless of the purpose. Individual words can have a tremendous impact. Think of the power of “yes” or “no” in a text, video or graphic.

Captivation: from “cool” to “wow”
To captivate, you must not only attract attention, but hold it. Captivation creates an affective experience that inspires both intellectual and emotional responses. When the audience member can imagine how it would feel to have been at the scene, or been in someone else’s shoes as described through the narrative, there is a point of personal connection. Crisp, clear language that complements visuals and other sensory offerings is far more effective than verbosity.

Why the blog format is so popular
The plain language and brevity of posts makes them easier to write and easier to consume. The blog format has a more “personal” feel – like a conversation. Blog posts often tell a story, and storytelling creates a more collaborative community or audience that shares relatable posts. The act of sharing stories reinforces the social benefits of the community.

Be careful with language
Watch out for buzzwords and clichés, and double-check meaning. If you’re undertaking a fulsome review, be sure that your review is excessive and lavish, because that’s what fulsome means. A tortuous process is full of twists and turns; a torturous process denotes something a little more painful.

But it still has to evoke…and entertain
(From my winning entry in the Toronto Star’s 2013 Poetry Week contest.)

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A precarious tango

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I have great respect for Mother Nature, but I’m not sure that it’s mutual. Opining about my weather nemesis is a favourite pastime. I sometimes tempt fate by mocking her whims, always lured back into a precarious tango where I think I can outwit her. Given her many life lessons to date, I really should know better.

First of all, there is not always method to her madness. It can be raining in the backyard, but sunny in the front; and if you take your umbrella, it won’t rain but if you leave it at home, it will. Thunderstorms have always been her preferred teaching tool with me, especially for lessons of the look-but-don’t-touch variety.

On the small, suburban street where I grew up, nearly every house has had some kind of damage from thunderstorms. Lightning strikes obliterated chimneys, cracked windows, blackened walls, fused dimmer switches, blew electrical outlets, and toasted a truck load of television sets. I observed the frayed nerves of the adults around me and learned to heed the watches and warnings, but sometimes the hubris of the young results in a little defiance.

In third grade, a late spring storm threatened just as the school day ended. My friend and I were determined to beat it home on our bicycles. We’d just unlocked them when an incredible array of lightning erupted. Tearing back inside, we told people we’d seen a fireball in the sky. They thought we were exaggerating until they examined the melted plastic casing on the chain of my friend’s bike lock. It had been around her neck at the time.

A year or two later on an overnight excursion from the main camp, my fellow campers and I held tightly to our sleeping bags as a relentless storm raged all around our droopy canvas tent. And then it hit, shaking the ground and evoking screams from every last one of us. A park ranger evacuated our group to the control station and we shivered together until the camp bus arrived. The next day was spent claiming our waterlogged belongings, sock by sock and shoe by shoe. Legend has it that lightning struck ground within a stone’s throw of the tent.

As a teenager, I played a fair bit of soccer. One weekend tournament was plagued by an unstable air mass with high winds. Just before a game, an eerie calm settled in but distant thunder could be heard. As the referee contemplated what to do, we all started pointing and laughing at each other as our hair stood on end. The game was called and we made it to shelter just in time. We had no idea how close we were to a sudden-death result.

In my 20s, a friend and I experienced a bizarre meteorological phenomenon while vacationing at a cottage. Just as a thunderstorm began, a softball-sized fiery orb appeared a few feet outside the sliding glass doors and then exploded. We hit the deck with ears ringing, shaken but unharmed. For those who doubt the existence of ball lightning, I can assure you that it’s real.

And then last summer, during one of those “special weather statement” kind of days, I glanced out the window to check on the band of storms sweeping through the area. The whole western sky was filled with astonishing cloud formations, lit from the outside in by the emerging sunset behind the dissipating front. Captivated, I went outside for a better look. After several minutes of staring in awe at the dramatic beauty, I noticed my next-door neighbour doing the same thing.

“You don’t see that every day,” he said.

I nodded, smiling.

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From learning curve to full circle

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Lifelong learning has become a mantra of modern existence, whether to explore passionate interests or enhance workplace skills. Once you hit the mid-career mark, however, it’s increasingly difficult to find good, useful and affordable professional development. Rare indeed are the one- or two-day sessions that actually deliver on what they’re advertising in a practical, transferable way. If not immediately applied, even the most promising models or tools quickly lose their lustre and become the latest additions to that one credenza drawer dedicated to conference swag.

Some argue that these events are more about networking anyway; if so, they should be developed and marketed with agendas better designed for mixing it up. Participants would need to know that ahead of time, of course, so they won’t be peeved that they can’t sit with their work chums and talk about what’s going on back at the office.

But changing organizational behaviour is tough. Early in my career, I had the chance to learn from a business strategist during a major re-engineering project. Through dogged prompting of other options and teasing out of risks, the naysayers were redirected by first-class change management until everyone heeded the boarding call. I admit to my own reticence when first hearing about tactics from their prestigious education, but I applied some of them in later years myself.

This kind of on-the-job learning, gained by observing and then doing, can be ideal. While you might not know all of the theory behind a certain technique, there is definitely an osmosis factor. Then knowledge turns to experience and wisdom through trial and error, exposure to new people, projects and environments, and zigzagging between roles and sectors.

We all hit the change-weary wall at some point though. I strongly resisted the digital-age machine until I felt the fear of falling out of step. I dove in headfirst, immediately hooked by the snappy headlines and instant gratification of new information. Nevertheless, the superfluous volume of content, along with the repetitive strain of clicking, thumb-typing, sweeping and scanning, made me long for a way to cut through the ambient noise and ambiguous discourse of digital-age mass communication and marketing.

Through a splendid stroke of serendipity, I saw the link for a certain MOOC (massive open online course). MOOCs are designed to connect interested learners with university courses offered at a variety of institutions – complete with lectures, tests and discussion forums – and free of charge other than the investment of your time and energy. You don’t earn a credit per se, but the value proposition can be high.

Critics of these programs note the tension between traditional brick-and-mortar classroom teaching and the so-called impersonal, anonymous online environment, citing issues of depth, quality and other factors both tangible and intangible, such as completion rates. But here’s the thing: MOOCs are ultimately a complement to formal in-class learning, not competition for it. There is a time and a place (and an audience) for both. Further, MOOCs are a safe way to try on a subject area without the drastic financial and life commitments that formal programs entail.

I found the materials in the MOOC I took to be highly engaging, the format readily accessible and the professors absolutely top-notch. There was also a vibrant and diverse community of students actively sharing, debating and connecting. I had to study, once I remembered how, because the quizzes and final exam very much tested whether or not you were paying attention “in class”. But I could immediately apply what I learned – some of the principles even as I was learning them – making the overall experience more beneficial than the aggregate of all of the brief professional development seminars, workshops and conferences I’ve attended over nearly two decades.

Ironically, the sponsoring institution for my course was the same school as that attended by the business strategist who wowed me early in my career. Now there’s a virtuous circle of learning if ever there was one.

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Smiling at the Symphony: the TSO’s excellent “Afterworks” series

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Who knew that Brahms was “tortured from the inside out” and that he wove his famously eloquent lullaby into Symphony No. 2 as a thinly veiled reminder to his lost love?

Through the wonderful storytelling of CBC’s Tom Allen, the audience at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Afterworks program learned about the lives, romances, struggles and triumphs of composers Brahms and Dvorak. Music does indeed stir the soul and hearing about the poetic yearning, the joy and the melancholy, made it that much more accessible and evocative as the notes told the rest of the tale.

The Afterworks series is the perfect antidote to the mid-week blahs, starting at 6:30 p.m. (though do arrive earlier to partake of the complimentary pre-performance hors d’oeuvres). With a length of 75 minutes, it’s just the right amount of time to indulge your senses, tickle your fancy, make you wistful, and make you smile, but still leaves enough of the evening for a late dinner with the ambiance playfully set.

Speaking of playing, the TSO is brilliant as ever and the conducting by James Gaffigan at the October 23rd performance was fabulous to behold.

Loved it. Torontonians and visitors, take advantage when these are offered…I wish I could go every Wednesday!

For more information:

http://www.tso.ca/Subscriptions/Subscription-Series/Afterworks/2013-2014-Season/Afterworks-Concert-Series.aspx

http://www.tso.ca/Concerts-And-Tickets/Events/2013-2014-Season/Brahms-Symphony-2-Afterworks.aspx

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Stardusted: “David Bowie is” mesmerizing at the AGO

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David Bowie. The name evokes a vast array of haunting lyrics and flamboyant styles: flash and pop, fashion and fame, glitz and glam, art and artifice, and the blurring of forms.

For me, the image that always leapt to mind was him running out on stage in the “Modern Love” video, with perfect suit, tie undone, and bouncy 80s hair bopping along as he danced at the microphone. Though I was familiar with his earlier work by osmosis if nothing else, the “Let’s Dance” album was my first Bowie purchase and – perish the thought – on cassette. I might still have it, though after 30 years, it’s now an artifact itself; a glossy memory of adolescence and the beginnings of independence. My formal introduction was thus smack-dab in the middle of an extraordinary career of transition and transformation.

The David Bowie is exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario (and organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum) most assuredly filled in the before-and-after gaps. This is a show about art and language, and artful language; of poetry and literature, film and photography, all of which were contributions to the multi-layered imagery inherent in song and story.

There is so very much to see – and hear, of course (do partake of the headset) – a history of pop culture and the earlier icons who influenced his work and inspired his many personae. The art in the collection is astounding, particularly his own pieces, many of which will make you pause and study.

There is an exploration of inner space and outer space, presence and existentialism, with a multitude of costumes and set designs, creations and illustrations, telling time on a complex watch with time-machine movement. On the poster for the 1986 movie “Labyrinth” in which Bowie stars as the “Goblin King Jareth” are the words, “Where everything seems possible and nothing is what it seems.”

While there are certainly illusory elements in his work, they are purposefully so, which simply reinforces the undeniable intensity of expression that has influenced pop culture over the course of four decades. Plan to stay longer than you might think, because you’ll want to linger over the details in the narrative and under the glow of the video screens. You might even find yourself wanting to sway, while colour lights up your face.

Just a few highlights:

Favourite literary reference: D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Favourite photograph: David Bowie, Reality Sessions by Frank W. Ockensfels 3 (2003) – it’s near the end, by the way

Favourite fashion: Costume for Screaming Lord Byron – Jazzin’ for Blue Jean by designer Alison Chitty (1984)

Favourite gift shop item: Union Jack denim (Oh, I was tempted, but alas, they didn’t have my size!!!)

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Within these walls

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I walked the ruins of Louisbourg on a cold day in August, gazing across the sweeping landscape, across what had once been streets bustling with activity, now quiet, the faint rectangles etching out the buildings of this former town, their edges barely delineating a crumbling existence.

I looked back to the reconceived structures and then to the water, where supplies took too long to arrive, the dream slowly dying when too little became too much. They held on until they were overrun; the life of Louisbourg as it once was slowly fell apart.

I don’t know if the goosebumps came from the mist streaming in off the Atlantic or the ghostly chill of the place itself, but they were there nonetheless. My visit occurred in 1999, and I still remember that sense of “feeling the history” quite vividly. 2013 marks the 300th anniversary of the founding of Louisbourg, then the capital of Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and the celebrations at the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of Canada continue through what remains of the visitor season.

Similar experiences also await to the north and the west, at the many forts and other historic sites that dot the landscape of what was once Lower and Upper Canada. Exploring the Fortifications of Québec National Historic Site of Canada and the spectacular heritage architecture of Québec City is magical. There remains a symphony of strength here; a decadence of beauty and strategy. History is everywhere you look, and there are many mesmerizing vistas to behold. A photographer’s dream, Québec City is one of the most attractive urban centres in the country, set against the breathtaking backdrop of the St. Lawrence River.

Fort Henry National Historic Site of Canada, in Kingston, Ontario, has a vibrant interpretive program, with drilling re-enactments and plenty of stories about nineteenth century British military life. There are many cavernous tunnels to explore and dramatic views looking down to Lake Ontario. Fort Henry is the kind of site that children and adults enjoy equally. Some say it’s haunted, by the way.

Canada as a nation is relatively young compared to others, but it has a long memory and a very old soul. These are just a few examples of the places that create lasting memories as well as a new appreciation for life then and now in this great country.

For more information:

Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of Canada:

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/ns/louisbourg/index.aspx

Fortifications of Québec National Historic Site of Canada: 

http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/qc/fortifications/index.aspx

Fort Henry National Historic Site of Canada:

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/docs/r/on/rideau/whl-lhm/chap2/chap2A2.aspx

Parks Canada:

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/progs/lhn-nhs/index.aspx

The dream still pristine: Sebastião Salgado’s GENESIS at the ROM

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Capturing through the camera lens the pure essence of what your eyes witness of the world is an elusive goal for most of us. “You should have seen it in the real,” we say, shaking our heads. “It was so much better.”

But Sebastião Salgado brings us that real, and it is startlingly beautiful, and at times, difficult, because these are not simple stories to share or to receive, evoking a complex mixture of emotions about this narrative of life unspoiled.

His exhibition, Genesis, on display at the Royal Ontario Museum through to September 2nd, brings us sweeping landscapes and sharply focused edges. Depicted are layers upon layers of nature still untouched by human hands, as well as human hearts and minds untouched by popular culture.

Landscape and life blend together, a thin veil between them as camouflage, protecting from outside forces. Black and white mix with grey and silver, patterning in dimensions and new perspectives, disguising truth and then revealing it in a kaleidoscope of earthly design; of humanity.

Despite the razor sharpness of some elements, there remains a certain dreamlike quality, cradling the viewer in an almost otherworldly comfort, as an arm around shoulders.

For those who have all but given up on perfection, you will find it here, both in the photographs and the subjects portrayed.

It seemed fitting, somehow, that a surprise summer rain shower was just starting to wash the grit from the sea of asphalt and concrete as I left.

For more information:  http://www.rom.on.ca/en/exhibitions-galleries/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/genesis-sebastiao-salgado