Seven Co-operative Reflections from Bologna, Italy
For two weeks I am participating in the Emilia-Romagna Co-operative Study Tour, which is a Vancity program designed to enhance knowledge about the co-operative movement and inspire connections between each other, our work and co-operative leadership. The Italian...
Cormac McCarthy and creativity and influence
Cormac McCarthy has passed from this world at the age of 89 and he was an icon of American literature and his real and violent words and stark sentences unabashedly embraced the run-on sentence to paint a real and brutal picture of the world. From my perspective,...
What if Succession was Cooperative?
The hit HBO television series, Succession, is over. My wife, who is her own person, and I (any millions of fans around the world) are experiencing some cultural emptiness on Sunday nights as we reflect on an impeccably acted show that somehow humanized truly awful...
Four Tips for Enhancing Your Task Management
Work requires a lot of different tasks and commitments. A day in the life of my job my attention is divided across multiple media inquiries, requests for help from team members, strategy documents to work on, new updates that I need to get the boss or a key...
Dear Vancity Interns…
Dear Vancity Interns (specifically those of you from the 2019 Community Leader Internship Program), Thank you, good luck with your next steps, and holy crap you are a talented group of human beings. Last Friday you completed your internship experience with Vancity,...
Five Reasons Why You Must Learn to Learn
September is right around the corner, so communities around the world are rightly focusing on the importance of learning. The thing is that the ability to learn is the most critical skill for everyone everywhere to develop regardless of whether we are heading back to...
Five Ways to Recharge your Batteries
I’ve needed to recharge this month. Work and life have been challenging. Between moving to a new home, my son changing daycare, and significant stresses at work, I started to notice that my battery was draining a lot faster than it was getting recharged. I was getting...
Five Reasons Why Learning Should Be Hard
“I really enjoyed this course” is a phrase that triggers me. The data are clear that having a good time during a learning experience has nothing to do with what we learn. Too often teachers want to be liked, stakeholders (parents, coaches or managers) want to see...
Three Ways to Instill Work Ethic in Kids
"Grandpa, what chores are we doing today?" is how my two kids started the second day of our vacation to my family home this summer. Sure, my oldest son works the land like most city kids do (with a lot of effort and enthusiasm in the first 30-minutes with just a...
Six Tips for Making Your Next Vacation Count
This summer I took a short week long vacation. Half the vacation was taken up by a bike trip around southern Vancouver Island. The other half was composed of errands around town and (near constant) phone checking. During the latter half of my vacation, I somehow spent...
The One Thing You Need to Know About Making Friends
After publishing an article about the profound benefits of friendship (it enhances everything from well-being to professional success), I received some feedback that folks wanted to learn more about how to make friends. In 2013, Lifeboat uncovered “the friendship...
Five Ways to Get Work Done Over the Summer
It can be hard to move work forward during the summer. People are away, the out-of-office replies are everywhere, the weather is hot, and things slow down. The problem is that projects need to be completed and results still need to be achieved. Here are five ways to...
The One Thing You Need to Learn in Your Twenties
Over the last few weeks my inbox and social feeds have been peppered (if not flooded) with articles and videos chock full of advice for twentysomethings. A lot of potential can be harnessed during this decade of discovery and I can’t say that many of the authors,...