Culture Change: Stars vs Structure

 

Instead of focusing on the CBC's core business as a public broadcaster, the organization's senior management is currently spending considerable time and energy dealing with the scandal-plagued departure of Jian Ghomeshi from the hit radio show Q with Jian Ghomeshi.

 

An organization focused on building up star power rather than strengthening internal organization.  They're paying for it, aren't they?

 

Speaking of organizations with internal problems:

 

Unlike most workplaces, when harassment or assault does occur on Parliament Hill, aggrieved parties do not have the same access to due process as they would anywhere else.  

 

The Hill workplace is not subject to provincial labour laws, which offer protection in every other place of employment in Ontario.

 

Politics is all about star players - players like Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau.  They raise big bucks, tear strips off of opponents and win target audiences.  When you're focused on wins, that's all that matters, isn't it?

 

Maybe - but maybe not.

 

Herle's conclusions: "If we can't make people believe that the political system acts in their interests rather than in private interests, we're going to be in even more trouble." 

 

People don't trust politics.  Even politicians don't trust politics.  But trust isn't part of the equation - that's too much like sociology.  Confidence is the name of the game.  Confidence in individual alphas to be effective headmen, alpha males.

 

It doesn't work; it's not sustainable.  The more power gets consolidated in one office and one person, the worse the culture gets, the more tribal the entire institution becomes.

 

There must be some kind of way out of here.

 

We're just waiting for someone to enlighten us. 

 

It's time we stopped waiting.  If change is going to happen, and it must, it will not be imposed from the outside; it must be nurtured from within.

 

 

Stumble by Design

"If intent is to plant a counter-narrative that Tory is racist, is getting everyone in the media to report tweet really a strategic stumble?"

If the intent is to stigmatise your opponent, make them look really bad in the eyes of the public then hey, not at all.  If winning is the only thing that matters to you, then yeah, take every shot at your opponent you can squeeze out.

Should your interest be to maybe do something about our democratic deficit, the muck-racking quality of our political debate and the increasingly bitter confrontations that are defining what should be civilised debates, carry on.

No one gets out alive.  Great leadership quality that, isn't it?

The Secret Sauce for Success

Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids learn and read about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.

To sum up all of what follows if you don't have time to read - the next evolution in healthy people and a healthy society is going to be redefining mental health from being about managing illness to fostering fitness.

Angela Lee Duckworth is an amazing speaker.  She has executive presence; from the moment she opens her mouth, you're hooked.  She gesticulates just enough to be engaging, she speaks in a confident tone at a solid pace and above all, she makes it abundantly clear that she knows her stuff.

This last one is what interests me the most.  Lee Duckworth talks about bouncing between careers, studying completely dissimilar groups - all the kinds of scattered, unfocused activity that is generally seen as traits of failures.  

What do we tell youth or job-seekers today?  Pick one subject, narrow in on it and do just that.  Find your "critical path" and pursue it, accepting no deviation.

The same mentality is increasingly true for politics, as best exemplified by the Political Right (Stephen Harper, Tim Hudak and Rob Ford come to mind) with their one-point plans and dismissal of everything else.  We want simplicity, sound-bites, one-dimensional narratives and quick wins.

It makes sense, right?  Simple sells.  Functional fixedness and message repetition sell.  We intuitively recognize that people don't want to have their brains stretched, they don't have the time to study complexity, so we continuously aim for "the low hanging fruit."

When it comes to failure, it's three strikes and you're out - if you're lucky.  If you can't get it right in a very narrow timespan, you're clearly never going to win and are therefore not a good investment.

Imagine if this was the approach we encouraged in our students.  "Look, you're clearly not a math whiz, so give up on it.  Science?  You're not bright enough, so move on.  The only think you'll amount to is manual labour, so forget all this learning and develop on your critical path to getting your foot in that door."

Education is about challenging our kids to expand their minds.  Learning to read, write, do math, think critically - these are all tough activities to undertake, like training for a marathon.  They're not easy; they take effort.  They are meant to take effort.

At some point along the way, though, we give up on this concept of a growth mindset and switch to functional fixedness.  "Don't confuse me with facts," our policy makers will tell us, "I know my plan is the only one to get the job done."

Bosses work the same way - "I have the answers, your job is to implement them.  Do what you're paid to and leave the rest to me."

Cognitive development, myelination of neuropathways has something to do with this, but again, that's complexity.  We don't want complexity, because we're too important or too busy to have to actually learn any more.

Sales, not growth, becomes the fixation.  How we feel shapes our behaviour, without us exploring the reason why.

We ask "what's in it for me?" or "what's my ROI?" or "why should I care?" putting our selfish best-interest first.  We focus on pushing content and taking what we can get, not on what we can contribute or what we have to learn.

Go back, watch Angela Lee Duckworth again.  Listen to what she says and how she says it.  She makes sense, she provokes thought, she engages - and she does it all in the span of six minutes.

Chuck Berry once said that it should take a long time to craft a great song - but only two minutes to sing it.  Songs are sourced from experience, from listening to music, from thinking about life - all activities that provide no immediate ROI, but that you can't innovate without.

It's really hard to write a great song for money, on the fly - songs are art, an expression of complex thoughts and feelings in digestible formats.

Like Lee Duckworth's presentation.  She's up there on stage, captivating an audience and inspiring people like me to share her story not because her primary objective is to make a buck or sell a book, but because she's twigged on to something that, in her mind, is so critical for people to understand that it would be wrong not to share.

Angela Lee Duckworth is an amazing speaker because she believes what she's telling.  She has dug deep and searched far, doing all the things we're told not to do in pursuit of answers to the questions that challenged her.

She has grown, she has come to see how her exploration has facilitated her cognitive growth and, through multiple iterations, she has excelled.

In short, Angela Lee Duckworth has done what all successful people do, throughout history - she has put the Why before the What or the How.  Her question has become her mission and that mission keeps driving her to greater heights.

Had she stopped at some point along the line, no one would have heard about her.  She'd be considered an abject failure.

The same holds true for people like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs.  

It's interest to note that these three men, like most successful, world-changing leaders, spent more than a little time exploring their own minds and their own motivations, as well.  They were driven to push past themselves and truly become agents of change.

What, then, is the secret?

It's the exact opposite of what we are taught, what we are told and what the marginally successful people we are told we should emulate represent.

Don't focus on selfish interest, a simple path over a short distance and get there as fast as possible. That may bring you wealth, it can even bring you fame, but these are passing things.  

The people that change the world think broadly, see failure as a teachable moment rather than an endgame and look far down the road to where we can and need to go.

They're not interested in scoring wins or beating opponents - history's actors are committed to understanding the world and making it a better place.  They are perpetual students, constantly learning, constantly iterating, constantly honing their message, drawing new connections and filling in the dark spaces of their understanding.

And every single last one of them circles back to cognition.

Angela Lee Duckworth is fascinated with how motivation works, how the mind functions and how we might develop grit through the educational process.  This is the same challenge CEOs, policy makers, managers, mentors, parents, health care providers, everyone is butting against.  Tried-and-true methods aren't working, but few know why.  They should work - carrot and stick financial motivation has been successful throughout the age of the Manufactured Economy, so it should work now, right? 

But it doesn't.  Why?

We generally come to understand a given process, but not the underlying mechanics.  Attack ads work because they do; bonuses work because they have; people that don't succeed are failures and are therefore not worth investing time or money in.  That's just how we think things work.

The way we used to think the world was flat, or the earth was the centre of the universe.  The way we think sales determines success now.  Or the way we think it's bluster that leads to success, or that success is an individual achievement.

Cognitive science is proving all of our assumptions wrong.  It's doing this by going beyond what we know and accept as true and asking why it might be the case.  People like Angela Lee Duckworth no longer accept the notion that some kids are failures, some people are just bad seeds and that people have personal plateaus that they reach and cannot surpass.

The way we understand the world is changing.  With this growing knowledge of why, new tools, technologies and processes are being developed that are fundamentally going to change our world.  

Open Government, Social-Emotional Learning, work culture, employee engagement programs, changes in metrics, new economic sectors, nudge theory, it goes on and on.

The successful people who will shape tomorrow are active today.  Many are flying under the radar, others are being dismissed entirely.  That doesn't bother them, because recognition isn't their motivation.

They are driven to know and as they learn, they see an emerging picture of where we are going next.  It's daunting, but very cool.  They want to be part of that world.  

This is the secret to success, which is the exact opposite of what we are taught.  

Understanding, not messaging.

Communication, not sales.

Be what we can contribute to, not take what we can.

Altruism is selfishness that plans ahead.

The only barriers between what we are and what we can be are in our mind.

When we are conscious of these barriers, we can tear them down.

When that happens, everything is possible.

You just have to believe it.

Angela Duckworth does - it's working pretty well for her so far.

Corporate Canada to the Rescue

"If we didn't have corporations donating there would be a big hole," she said.  "Corporate Canada should be out there supporting our military."

Just yesterday, I posted that Stephen Harper is no strategic genius; I stand by that.  There's genius in this, but I don't think it was all Harper, or even all intentional.  And as with everything the Harper Conservatives do, there will be unintended consequences that bite them in the ass.

First - Bronwen Evans is right.  Corporate Canada should be out there supporting our military.  The reason it's safe for them to do business other than munitions is because we have a semi-thriving democracy - that's in no small part due to the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform.

It's in the Private Sector's best strategic interests to support our military.  A bit of advertizing on the side makes them feel good, like they're getting their money's worth.  I have no problem with that, so long as there are no pushy sales tactics being deployed against the vets and their families at the same time.

If I were to hear that Air Canada or VIA followed up with sales letters to these families ("we looked after you, now you should be using us exclusively") I'd be pretty pissed and hope you'd be, too.

Canada's a bit behind on the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) game, so that's not impossible.  If you look beyond our borders, though, you'll see that smart companies are recognizing that doing good for good's sake is strong enough advertizing in and of itself.

Two of my favourite:

Companies like Apple have recognized that supporting Gay Marriage actually helps build brand loyalty  

NASCAR Nation has recognized the community-building value of supporting a social cause, like environmental sustainability.

We're seeing more of this kind of thing in fits and spurts across the board - Open Data initiatives that are designed to inform and engage the public, changes to labour practices that empower and better support employees, angel investment of money but, even more importantly, time and expertise to help boost good-concept Not For Profits that lack the resources to organize or outreach properly.

In short, we're seeing the Private Sector step up in fits and spurts at a time when Government funding for Not For Profits is dwindling.

This is Score 1 for the Conservatives - they dislike government and prefer the private sector anyway.  

They'd love to see a minimalist government strictly focused on policy, with implementation being done by other parties.

But here's where it gets interesting.

While the Harper Tories are all about promoting traditional Conservative values (tough competition at the front-end of labour, with would-be employees needing to aggressively market themselves to employees, no social services so people are forced to up their game, minimal environmental protections so as no to impede maximum profit through maximum extraction), the Private Sector is moving in the other direction.

Environics is all about empowering and supporting employees.  Apple actively supports gay marriage.  

And NASCAR Nation is all about climate change and how to green our communities.  The Corporate Sector is picking up where government leaves off, but not in the way I think the political right intended.

Outside of the industries the Harper Government prefers, like the Alberta Oil machine, we're seeing, dare I say it, more centrist and even socialist approaches to engagement from the very people the Conservatives hope will carry forth their message.

There's no surprise in this - a changing economy requires a new approach and businesses that are looking past the four-year election cycle really have no choice but to consider the impacts of less oil, poverty or climate change on their operations.

So in a way, Team Harper are getting what they want - government does less, the Private Sector does more, even if it comes with sponsorship opportunities attached.

Should the Private Sector start looking more to the Centre for their own best practices, however, I can only say this - Team Harper shoulda seen that coming.

Progressively Growing Beyond the Short Pants

But it's a mistake to blame this on the boys in short pants.  They are the symptom, not the cause.  The deeper problem is that too much power is now concentrated at the centre, rather than shared with parliament.

 

This post on elected officials, accountability and social responsibility by Don Lenihan makes a great companion piece to Andrew Coyne's article on free speech and sociology-committing from yesterday.

 

Come again?

 

What's the connection between Parliamentarians speaking truth to power and everyone putting in the effort to understand each other?

 

Exactly.  We have a system that is increasingly slanted towards competition, which is not the same thing as debate.  When you're rushing to get ahead, you aren't interested in solving structural problems; you're only interested in getting what you can for yourself.

 

Parliament, for instance, has become steadily more competitive, with partisan tribalism usurping the democratic process.  Has it resulted in better solutions, greater civic engagement or even constructive dialogue?

 

Nope.  The reverse has happened; our democracy is actually atrophying as it is more and more neglected.  We're getting narrower solutions that serve smaller percentages of the population, leading to worsening outcomes and beyond that, more and more people tuning out of politics entirely.

 

Or worse - charting their own path outside our system without the checks and balances democracy provides.

 

We know what happens when too much power concentrates in one place, because we've seen it happen countless time before.  The inevitable result is the societal equivalent to an aneurysm that negatively impacts the whole system.

 

Which is the key word here - system.  Like gravity, it doesn't matter how much we choose to deny the reality that society is a system and we are all part of that system - it remains true nonetheless.  An objectivist view that denies there's any such thing as society theoretically fosters a competitive world where the strongest survive, but society isn't a food chain, it's an organism.  When parts of the system are neglected, the whole suffers.

 

You don't cure an illness by treating the symptoms any more than you solve lead poisoning without looking up the pipe to see where the lead is coming from.

 

It's not the boys in short pants that are the problem, nor is it the politicians or even the public.  People are people and, surprisingly enough, have a tendency to act like people.  We aren't rational super beings with an meta-conscious ability not to be impacted by biology and environmental factors - prick us and we bleed, wrong us and we'll seek justice.

 

But when a problem repeats itself, one-off justice won't be enough; we'll start looking for causes and solutions.  That's when competition starts to bleed into query and, eventually, comprehension.

 

Then, everything changes.

 

We're not quite at that point yet - but we're getting there.

Baby steps, don't you know.

Leadership: Yours to Discover

Once you are confident you have a manager who is aligned with your strengths you need to find ways to show them your stuff and ask them for coaching and mentoring in those areas.  They need to feel ownership of your success and like they "discovered" you.

Remember the whole John Tory/golf/complain for promotions thing?  This is that mentality he was referencing.

We have a system that encourages people to validate their bosses and make the people at the top of the food chain feel like they are pioneers.  In practice, though, how often is it that the people at the bottom are the ones leading the way forward and empowering the people with access to resources and broad networks?

The truth is, there are some amazingly talented people out there right now either succeeding quietly or nudging towards great things at a painfully slow pace because no one is looking to guide them.  These are the pioneers, treading new ground and building new bridges where they need to but expanding outwards, not racing to the top.

Just imagine what we could accomplish if we had actual leaders at the top as well as at the bottom, connecting in the middle. 

There's no telling how far we could grow.

Political People

Samara titled its poll findings: "By Invitation Only" - suggesting that Canadian political parties have become exclusive, members-only private clubs.

It might be even worse than that, though.  With their fierce, black-and-white classifications of the world into friends and enemies, right and wrong, the parties seem more like tribes than clubs.

A good piece by Delacourt, though I'm biased:

Our politics is becoming increasingly narrow in its focus, too.

Politics is selfish, tribal and focused on doing whatever it takes to win

So on and so forth.

But I think she's dead wrong on one point - a key point:

These people; they were different from you and me.

How many Team Canada jerseys did I see on the streets today?  How many people put on garb and makeup for athletic events in general?  Or do Cosplay, or dress like a hipster, or wear a pin for cancer awareness?  Why do we spend so much money on fashion in the first place?

Symbols matter; we see the world through the lens of symbols.  That's not something that sets us apart; that's something we have in common.  We also understand the world through identification - threat, benefit, no value.  That's basic biological hardwiring. 

The more competitive we are, the more we rely on these narrow frames; one group to belong to, another to define ourselves against.  There's nothing unique to political people about this.  It's innate to everybody.  By gender, language, ethnicity, sexuality, even music preference we're always creating "us" and "them" categorizations.

You put anyone under conditions of extreme, chronic competitive strain, they will distill the world down into zero-sum competition; with them, against them or in their way.

You see, there is fundamentally nothing different between us and political people - it's the competitive, time-sensitive and increasingly expensive pressures of political culture that makes them feel the need to differentiate from us.  It makes it easier to be manipulative of voters and vicious to their opponents - and controlling of their own teams.

We need to dehumanize people before we can treat them in inhumane fashion.  And that's exactly what politics does; this is why partisan politics is spiraling down the ethical drain and increasingly focused on micro-targeting key messages to key, targeted constituents.  It's not about growing the country equitably; it's about fighting over shrinking resources.

Which leads into the real nub of the issue here.  When "Canadians" start to see themselves as different than those "political people", it's not because they're trying to figure out why the behavioural differences; it's a subconscious way of dehumanizing them, allowing for less humane treatment back.

We can't say we weren't warned, though.

I shouted out
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me

Andrew Coyne: Canada's Hari Seldon

The effect will be to encourage people to sift through the actions, not only of Leslie but of other senior officers, looking for signs of political ambition. It will further encourage the Conservatives to believe their enemies lurk everywhere in government — in the Bank of Canada, in the courts, even in the military — and to justify their own increasing politicization of these offices in turn, as a kind of self-defence. After this, and previous flirtations with elected office on the part of Mark Carney and Louise Arbour, it is impossible to say they are wholly wrong.

And here I thought I was crafty.  It's good to see him ahead of the game, though.

Post Political Cynicism: What Comes Next?

 

Now, cynics mock the great, the wise, and the good.  They even mock the mockers; they are weasels fighting weasels.  Humans threaten to destroy themselves.

 

Few will know the story of Topf und Sonne, but therein lies the true narrative of laissez-faire capitalism in its purist form.  There are few lines we can draw within ourselves that, when the sun rises again, we can live with what we've done under the cover of darkness.

 

But the sun also rises, as it must, and brings with it new horizons.  There's a reason why visionaries are optimistic - they can sense the warm rays of dawn even when night is at it's darkest.

 

Which it isn't - not yet. 

 

But then we all know that it's always darkest before then, don't we? 

 

It's okay to despair the cynicism of our times, and even to fall victim to it occasionally - unless you aim to be a leader.  People don't look to leaders for despair; they can despair on their own. 

 

The job of leaders is to provide hope and direction. 

 

 

Far Beyond the Stars, Black to the Beginning

 

 

In response to the verdict, the hashtag #dangerousblackkids emerged on Twitter, with participants questioning a society where unarmed black kids are often interpreted as threats.

 

It's very hard to shake the beliefs of bigots. 

 

Bigots automatically assume "ethnic" superiority over whoever it is they stigmatize, and as such can forgive any manner of inhuman behavior on their part.  An apex predator doesn't make apologies to mere scavengers, does he?

 

This means that they have no qualms bullying, undermining or threatening their quarry until they get the response they want.  If a bigot believes all black people are genetically prone to violence, they'll just keep pushing or denying rights until they prove themselves right. 

 

Such is always the case with marginalized people - they are labeled as violent, lazy or hand-out dependent.  It surely couldn't be the conditions of their stigmatization at issue, could it?

 

Which is why I love #dangerousblackkids.  It's cheeky, it's viral, and it's non-violent.  It shows intelligence, social media savvy and equally importantly a sense of community - not just "black" but of everyone who dislikes bullies, including white kids from rural Ontario like me.  Such is the power of memes done right.

 

Instead of becoming that which you would stand against, you have to raise the bar higher.  If the only

 way to extinguish the doppers is to reach new heights, so be it; let's keep on climbing.

 

Leaked video from the CPC Campaign Plan!

"... what we need is a clear message to the people of the country!  This message should be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television.  This message must resound throughout the entire interlink!  I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion!  I want every man, woman and child to understand how close we are to chaos!  I want everyone to remember why they need us!"

But that doesn't come from the secret-yet-leaked Conservative campaign plan.  

This stuff does:

"It says the Conservatives intend to use dedicated websites, online ads and videos, daily email updates and social media to keep up a barrage of attacks on Trudeau throughout the convention, the document reveals."

"We can also use the opportunity to build an 'anti-Trudeau' supporters' list.

"The six page note says the Conservatives' goal is to 'drive our narrative'" and "The party says it wants a "Conservative voice" in all stories that come out of the Liberal convention 'while ensuring a consistent contrast between the Liberal leader's poor judgement and the strong stable leadership of the Prime Minister."

What - you didn't expect a fully free economy and public objectivism to happen all on it's own, did you?

"When the master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists." 

It's not about his strong, stable leadership, after all - it's about empowering strong people for a healthy society.  It's only when you lack faith in people that you feel the need to message them to death.

"If you don't trust people, you make them untrustworthy."

When you need to remind people why they need you over anyone else, it's pretty clear where the power truly lies.

The Uncomfortable Truth Behind Cognitive Labour

The enhancement of these mental skills might also explain the striking correlation between creative production and depressive disorders.

I may have posited something along these lines to various tough-minded people in charge; they may in turn have told me I think too much.

But I've got a habit of being right on this stuff, don't I?

Depressed Leaders Think Ahead

If depression didn't exist - if we didn't react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations - then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments.  Wisdom isn't cheap, and we pay for it with pain.

Did Dean de Mastro think ahead, or learn from his mistakes?  No he didn't.

Did Julian Fantino or Rob Ford or Vic Toews ever truly admit to responsibility, mull over their weaknesses and try to do better?  The evidence isn't promising.

Did Mike Duffy recognize guilt and try to solve his problem, or did he deny blame and try to make the problem someone else's?  Has Stephen Harper or his inner circle every accepted responsibility for mistakes, or have they blamed others and tried ever harder to obscure their actions?

We can go on forever with this list, but it comes down to this - the majority of our genetic programming encourages us to trust the people who shoot first and ask questions later.  It's a decent method in a small-band, survival-of-the-fittest scenario, but not for a complex, interdependent society.

The people we need to turn to the most in complex social times are the ones we're least likely to pay attention to until it's too late - sometimes for them, far too often for the rest of us.

While the boss asks, "what's in it for me right now?" the leaders looks ahead to what can be gained - or avoided - and acts accordingly.

We don't have a lot of leadership these days.

Which, I would imagine, is why we are constantly dogged by past mistakes.

Two Converging Trends in Canadian Politics:

The government has facilitated this strategy by allowing departments to criminalize whistle-blowing in their codes of conduct - as the House of Commons just did.  The RCMP, CIDA and the Library and Archives of Canada have all been in the news recently for the same reason.

 

Work in government and have concerns that corruption, unfair practices or even poorly thought-through decisions are being made?  Best not to have an opinion or even think about rocking the boat; your job, even your freedom may be at risk.

 

Of course, this should come as no surprise.  It's getting harder and harder to keep secrets, as political people at all levels are increasingly realizing.  In particular, social media and the digitization of information has made it dirt simple for information to get out both intentionally and accidentally.

 

Faced with this reality, politicians and backroom operators who may cut corners for the good of the realm (i.e., the Party or their own fortunes)  have two options - one is to reform their behaviour so as to be able to withstand scrutiny.  The other is to try and clamp down even harder.  History tells us where the latter path leads, yet that's the road being taken.

 

Canada has an innovation deficit.  Our government is basing policy decisions on weak data and putting ideological pursuits before sustainability.  What impact does this have on the morale and dedication of staff?  What does it do to the ability to recruit and retain talent?  Just as important - what do Canadians themselves think of this trend?

 

Support for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is dropping sharply, according to a new poll showing a majority of Canadians believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

 

If you're a political communicator, this is a communications issue; the biased media is out to get you, the pundits are all in the pocket of the other guys, internal people are overstepping their mandate by releasing information in disloyal fashion to the public. 

 

People don't really care about direction, because they don't understand it - only the confidence and message-control of the leader matters.

 

Which leads us back to point #1.

 

Team Harper, as well as other political teams out there, will look for the mud pies to sling - Senate Scandals, poorly-phrased quotes on China, so on and so forth.  They think these headline-making gaffes and failures are enough to sink a government, without as much contextual analysis as is warranted.  Why bother?  We are smart, they are dumb - they won't notice or be able to respond, simply because we are better than they are.

 

When you make the rules, you have all the answers, right?  The trick is to stifle any opposing perspectives.

 

Which is exactly what's happening.  Which is fuelling our winter of discontent.  People don't trust politicians, they don't believe in government and with a growing number of pols flaunting our laws, there's less impetus for average citizens to do anything differently.

 

So - what happens when these two storms converge?

Community of Engagement

There's nothing wrong with a group of influential citizens coming together at Wynne's behest to undertake public consultations.  But when the chattering classes are just talking to themselves, it's an echo chamber.

We live in interesting times.

A whole series of political/infrastructure issues that have received band-aid solutions for years and years are getting to the point where invasive surgery is needed.  Urban transit is in dire need of a structural fix that goes beyond one-off subway lines, requires buy-in from a host of different players and likely will involve a complete cultural revisitation of commutes and work.  For folk in rural Ontario, the appearance of urban bias is distinctly troubling - they want a focus on issues more relevant to them, ranging from service access to broadband and increased economic opportunities.

Healthcare costs continue to balloon; we want to pay less, but we also don't want a reduction in care. As the silver surge begins to crest, this is going to get even worse.  Our economy is stalled - there's enough evidence as to why this would be the case (we have a risk-adverse, weather-the-storm business culture that is refusing to invest in innovation, new ventures and new talent).

On top of all this, mistrust of politicians is at an all-time high (or low).  It seems every new leader comes in promising to be transparent, accountable and honest, then become an even worse caricature than the leader's they were elected to replace.  This is particularly true among youth, who are the future - they don't trust that politicians, or their elders have their interests at heart.  They don't have much hope for the future and are planning accordingly.

Then, there's the silo-based institutional challenge.  Government was designed for simpler times; like files stuffed in a drawer, new additions of service, administration and accounting have been piled beneath what was there before, creating a series of teetering towers of Ministries and Agencies that have insufficient structural supports/information flow between them.  Oh - and no metrics.

And of course, we have political culture operating much as political culture always does; whoever is in charge tries to control the narrative so as to bolster their chances for future electoral success while opposition parties look only to point out flaws, blow them up into scandals and pin absolutely everything on the government of the day.

The problem is, people in general increasingly know how the game and know what to look for. Impossibly puffed-up brands are quickly deflated.  Underselling and over-delivering always works well, but the over-delivering part has become uncommon, as the narrative keeps coming back to the big bad structural issues that are messy to fix, hard to sell and uncomfortable for everyone involved.  There are no big-thinking giants on the stage anymore - the problems we face have outgrown the usual suspects.  

If you're in politics, it's hard to see any way out.  It's easy to avoid the need for a way out - incrementalism has, after all, worked well in the past.  If you're comfortably ensconced in the clay layer at the middle of the bureaucracy - the folk that don't get cut, don't much rise above, but control the implementation of everything - your imperative for change is minimal, too.

At the front lines, though, people are increasingly agitating for change.  They don't know what it looks like, but they know it's long overdue.  Something has to give, they feel, and it ain't them - they've given enough.  Unions are girding for battle.  Community groups are hardening their hearts and sharpening their swords.  Political operators are picking their fights and driving their wedges.  The Private Sector is staying out of it, or strategically fighting only where their interests are at stake.  Winter has arrived.

But this isn't a war any one group can win - because the opponent isn't a nation that can be disarmed, a government that can be supplanted or a community that can be oppressed.  When the dust clears, we're still all going to be here with a system that increasingly serves none of us well.

You can't fight evolution.  You can't cut out overburdened infrastructure.  We, collectively, need to solve this the hard way.  It won't be tough Boss-leaders that lead this charge.  It may not even be political leaders that provide the vision and direction.  In a flat communications landscape, you never know where leaders will emerge from.

Which brings us back to consultations.  There are always lots of consultations going on, but they're not always what they sell themselves as - there's a wealth of difference between discuss, decide, do and decide, message and defend.  The latter has always been good enough; it isn't any more.

A couple of key consultations happening right now that involve the City and the Province on issues of structural importance and, thankfully, they're being done well.  Recruited teams have broken the third wall of the echo chamber and are engaging in meaningful, demonstrable ways with regular people.  It's not easy, this, building trust where none has cause to exist, bridging communication gaps and sifting through opinion to find actionable policy - but it's necessary.  Besides, for problem solvers, easy is boring.  They relish the challenge of building something new.

And that's the key difference right there.  You don't hear about it, but there is a nascent community of problem solvers with voices at all different levels that are putting shared solutions first.  These are senior bureaucrats, the odd political staffer and lots of first-tier civil servants, but there are also lots of community activists, professionals from various fields and social catalysts of all kinds.

This community doesn't have a name, but it is slowly piecing together the foundation of a more integrated and engaged society.  You'll be hearing more about this emerging group as they become better coordinated and as the need for them to step up grows more dire.

Yet the internal forces of inertia, especially with a popular leader at the helm, will be strong.  Not an easy problem to solve.  No, but the best kind.

Interesting, even challenging times, indeed - but don't worry.  It'll be alright.  The best is yet to come.

UPDATE 19/12/13:  Chopra said Canadians were widely consulted about changes and if they read newspapers and follow the media they shouldn't have been taken by surprise when the corporation announced it was raising stamp prices and cancelling door-to-door delivery.  Chopra said 46 communities were consulted about losing daily mail service.

He's using that word consultation, but I don't think it means what he thinks it means...

Doing Nothing Is Not A Strategy

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger.  Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."

  - Mel Brooks

So what do you call it when Canada's Minister of Finance refuses to recognize that his fiscally conservative, "each man to himself" approach to financial sustainability simply can't and won't work?

The Conservative ideology is based on this basic premise - people are rational actors and, left to their own devises, will make the choices that are in their best financial interest.  It's when you have things like social programs, regulation and unequal tax breaks that people and businesses get all squirrely.

Therefore, he has no interest in expanding the Canadian Pension Plan.  He isn't a fan of welfare programs.  Like his family friend, Rob Ford, Flaherty thinks that a job is a job - people should just get one.  If the opportunity is driving taxis, like he did, then do that.  If it's moving to Alberta to work in the oil sector, do that.  

The pressure is on individuals to make themselves worthy of hire by companies, who should be taking a laissez-faire approach to hiring, and innovation, and corporate social responsibility.  After all, they have to spend their money wisely - investing in something that's not a sure thing isn't wise.  

Except, he also thinks it's the responsibility of the Private Sector to stimulate the economy.  Canada's already done it's party, he said: "We've done a lot through the tax system to encourage Canadian executives, business people, to start utilizing some of the capital they have on their balance sheets."

Yeah, and?  Just as Flaherty is telling Canadians its their job to plan for their individual economic futures, Canadian businesses are planning for their future.  More money in the bank and less expenditures means better individual long-term sustainability.  Winter has come and Canada is in economic hibernation.  They intend to carry on carrying on, looking for cost savings in cuts and hiring more people on contract so as not to have to invest in their individual well-being through pension and health plans.

There is no business culture of innovation in Canada.  There never has been a business culture of innovation in Canada.  Just like Flaherty and the rest of Team Harper, Canada's private sector has largely put all their eggs in the natural resources basket (oil, mining, lumber, so on and so forth) and because it's worked this far, they expect the trend to continue.  There's no incentive for them to look ahead when what's come before presents such an appealing picture.

So, you have individuals who are either stuck in positions that don't provide benefits/don't make enough to save or don't have work at all.  The unemployed would love to get work, but the fact is they aren't trained for existing positions or worse, are over-trained; employees aren't going to invest in people they don't think will stick around, even though they'd only put them on contract anyway.

What happens when you have a risk-adverse government that's not interested in investing, a business culture that is anti-risk and anti-investment and individuals who are struggling to keep roofs over their head today and therefore unable to plan for their long-term sustainability?

When nobody is investing in long-term sustainability, you end up with long-term societal rot.  This takes the form of broken infrastructure, poverty, crime and more self-interested thinking that reduces charitable giving and leads to frayed nerves and antagonistic behaviours - not something you want in densely populated communities.

As federal administration and planning fails, provinces are looking to seize political wins and also invest in solutions; as they're closer to ground-level, they will wear the brunt of the feds failures more than the feds themselves will.  This is exactly what Team Harper want, of course - a breakdown of social systems and an increasingly feudal approach to problem solving.  For all their fiscal focus, the CPC seems not to understand economies of scale.

So Ontario is jumping in with plans to do its own pension plan, which is s starfish solution if ever there was one.  But then again, they haven't been left much choice.  Someone has to lead and when the feds ignore national problems, someone has to step up.

There's no way Ontario can afford to do this properly and besides, they've got other issues on their burner.  The Opposition Parties are going to focus on every fault and scandal they can tie to the governing Liberals and for their own interests, are stirring up resentment and hostility between their core constituencies.  Whoever wins, there will be a lot of unhappy people agitating for change.  Like Flaherty, they're looking for their own wins and aren't going to be interested in spending their own money to invest in someone else's benefit - be it unions, welfare programs or tax dollars that seem to fund corporation-friendly policies over social justice.

Fortunately, there's a small foundation of forward-thinking people and institutions starting to emerge on the social/political landscape.  Police are looking into social media and creating community relationships.  Social entrepreneurs are structural solution development ahead of personal fortune. Even some private-sector organizations are recognizing that the world is changing and are working to adapt.  Open Government is trendy, though its implementation is far from certain.

Some people are looking ahead and realizing that the road we're on leads to a dead end, so they're branching out, changing direction, looking for bridges.

But not Flaherty.  He's got his one last chance to build a positive legacy for all time, to validate all the losses of his career - if he can balance the budget by 2015, then his time in office will have meaning.  

In his defence, Flaherty is in need of something positive to cling to right now.  He's tired, his health isn't great and he has various political albatrosses, some of which are named Ford, constantly circling him. Like anyone under stress, he is becoming functionally fixed on what he's defined as a win and is less and less prepared to spare a thought on anything that doesn't get him there.

Which means he's making a choice not to look at the big picture, not to take a look at emerging trends and pointedly ignoring the consequences of his inaction.

Doing nothing theoretically creates opportunities for everyone to step up, but it doesn't guarantee it happens - nor does it guarantee coordinated efforts.  Ragging the puck doesn't get you further ahead, it simply eats up the time you have available for action.  Inaction is not a strategy and playing "wait and see" is not leadership.  We sorely need leadership right now.

We might think if funny if Flaherty falls into a career sewer because he refused to look ahead - it won't be so funny if he brings Canada's economy and our own fortunes with him.

Shurmanated

Paul Bliss ‏@blissblogs28m

The resignation of MPP Peter Shurman leaves a big hole for the Progressive Conservatives. He was one of their best communicators. #ONpoli

Expand

But four senior Conservative sources said the leader was worried the Liberals would win Thornill without Shurman and pleaded with the popular incumbent to remain there, event hough Hudak knew he was living in Niagara by then.

I don't fully blame Shurman for his whole housing scandal.  He could have disagreed with his leader and chosen to run in Niagara regardless - but then he would have been disagreeing with his leader in a big way; there are consequences to independent thought in hyper-partisan politics.  

He wanted to be an MPP and make a difference, maybe have a shot at a Cabinet seat one day - and the only way to do that was to appease his leader.  I disagree with his claims for housing and gas, but again; his boss had told him to represent a riding he didn't live in and as such, he did have costs related to the commute.

Could the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario have covered these costs, as they were adamant that Shurman continue to represent Thornhill?  We've seen how that plays out in the Senate Scandals with Mike Duffy - not an ideal solution for any Party, or leader.

Hudak made a call to disregard the intent of the rules so that he could keep a seat and, like any employee who feels imposed upon, Shurman found ways to compensate himself for the trouble.  

Ignore the scale, and it's really no different than an overworked/poorly managed office employee who feels justified in printing out their kid's school papers on company paper because they feel they put in more effort than they're compensate for.

But then I don't entirely blame Hudak, either.  After all, he very well could have lost Thornhill if Shurman hadn't run and in politics, winning seats is everything.  We've seen how ethical people who hold to their ethics get treated in politics - they get trampled on.

Hudak's been weighed down by a heavy chain during his entire tenor as leadership - Ontario's not warming up to his style.  His politics are angry, and largely appeal to angry people.  It's a competitive business, though, and success is determined by outcome, not the process that gets you there.  

You have to win to implement your agenda, but to win, you need need bums in seats.  Policy choices, messaging, tour schedules, attack ads, who you pick fights with - all the stuff that goes into the sausage that is politics is determined by what should land you a win.  

Of course, when it becomes about winning, not achieving, you've lost.  It doesn't matter if you get the seats and form government, as Stephen Harper has done - the things you stood for, the ethics you once held dear end up detritus on the path to a hollow victory.  

Shurman, Duffy, Rob Ford, even Hudak with his desperate bluster are canaries in our political coal mine, telling us that something is wrong with the system.

Maybe it's time we stop band-aiding in or ignoring the cracks in the system and actively try to heal it.

After all, that which fails to evolve doesn't move forward, nor does the system move backwards to accommodate - what doesn't adapt, dies.