Five Ways to Connect Your Workplace
The purpose of so many organizational teams, like innovation labs, and startup ecosystems, like Silicon Valley, is to disrupt the status quo. I’ve written about why we need to disrupt our workplaces and how to do it. The thing is that when the status quo is disrupted...
Nervited
When humans feel the combination of nervousness and excitement we are nervited. Our team was feeling nervited last week because we delivered a conference for 600 employees that blended inspirational speakers, peer-learning, good food, and digital creativity. We felt...
Three Professional Lessons from Barber Shops
I go to Uptown Barbers in Vancouver’s (Mt. Pleasant ‘hood to get my hair cut every six weeks or so. Marco and Ben – the two barbers who I most often visit – deliver haircuts as good as the banter in their shop. Being able to start and sustain great conversations while...
Three Professional Lessons from the Fugitive
In the hit 90s film, The Fugitive, Harrison Ford plays Dr. Richard Kimble, a brilliant doctor falsely framed for killing his wife. After being convicted, a shackled Kimble is sent off to death row on a prison bus. During a daring escape, Kimble and another prisoner...
Five Ways to Succeed When Collaborating with a Recruiter
As you move forward in your career, there’s a good chance that you will be working with a recruiter – either an internal specialist or external search firm. If it’s your first time working with a recruiter, it can be intimidating. My recent interactions with a number...
Three Future of Work Infographics You Must Read
Like many leaders in learning and development, I spend a lot of time thinking about what work will look and feel like in the future and how we might get ready for it today. Recently I came across three future of work infographics that you must read.They were created...
Three Ways to Relate to Fundamentally Different People
Last month our book club tackled Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. The book gave us an illuminating look at moral and evolutionary psychology, exploring the moral pillars that underpin the morality of people...
Four Professional Lessons From the 2018 World Cup Final
We probably just experienced one of the greatest Men’s Football World Cup Finals in modern history. There were own-goals, there was controversial technology, titans of the sport fell, young-upstart-squads excelled, and we all compartmentalized the event’s unfortunate...
Five Ways to Support a Partner in Professional Trouble
It happens from time to time. Your partner comes home from work defeated. A project went off the rails, they failed to hit their annual target, or were fired after making a big mistake that cost their organization big bucks. In situations like these, being empathetic...
What I Learned about Resilience from the Crushing Defeat of my Team
Its World Cup time and this year there will be plenty of teams whose hopes and dreams will fall by the wayside in the coming month. Meanwhile, back at home, I recently returned from a soccer tournament in Alert Bay, BC. We’ve written about June Sports before. It is a...
10 Ways to Add Value Like Italians
For the last two weeks I’ve been exploring the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy with my colleagues from Vancity. Our home base was Bologna, the region’s capital, which is the epicenter of the co-operative movement and in possession of Europe’s oldest university....
Four Career Lessons from Training Day
Starring Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke in their prime, Training Day tells the story of a corrupt cop Alonzo (Washington) who takes his new recruit Jake Hoyt (Hawke) on a hell of a ride for his first day working narcotics in Los Angeles. The film is just awesome....
Five professional lessons from Fargo the Series
Netflix’s TV series Fargo tells the tale of a series of awful murders in and around Bemidji, Minnesota. After a fateful encounter with a ruthless hitman, local pushover Lester Nygaard finds himself drawn into a double life of murder and deception. As Lester goes down...