Do The One Small Thing (60 mins)

How powerless we can feel in a world of change, 24/7 go-go, and negative news. How easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking there’s no personal way to make a difference despite our hearts that ache to do exactly that. Now is the time to take control. Assume responsibility. Train your mind to see the beautiful all around us – and tap a powerful ability to effect big change from small things YOU can do this week. A personal empowerment framework is presented. Discussion of real world examples helps refresh spirits, and seeks to inspire in our own actions.

Coaching For Life (60 mins)

We teach dribbling or skating around cones. We helicopter. We yell. We have medals for everyone. We think our kid will be the next superstar. And…we miss the point of it all. Kids crave mentors that care. They crave mentors that help them push themselves to fully realize a potential they often don’t know the bounds of. At its best, sport is a metaphor for life to come. Character development leads – and yes that includes competitive spirit. It should serve what we all want: to raise kids to be the best version of themselves. How do we make this happen? Ten Character-Building Principles are discussed, inspired by seven years of coaching, three Provincials medals, and two kids in competitive sports. Stories – from hummingbirds to boiling water – offer additional insights into the soul of sports.

Follow the Leader (60 mins)

Follow The Leader – Dig a moat around Town Hall! What? Well think of it as an unconventional (ok slightly facetious) communications idea to get people to read the municipal budget. There’s a million books about leadership, but not much in a government context – where every resident is a member of the Board of Directors and consensus-building is more likely to lead to gray hair than results. Thirty-four years of experience working with organizations in all forms yields practical municipal and economic development leadership principles you can apply to your work today.

Sell with Sizzle: Dare to be Different (60 mins)

While the comedian Steven Wright facetiously said “Everyone has a photographic memory… some just don’t have film,” the truth is that being memorable is core to strength of a product, a brand/marketing, and business success. How do we create great “film” as designers of experiences that drive a business bottom line? Join in on an energetic and pragmatic exploration of obstacles and memory-making in a noisy marketing world that craves your stand-out pursuit of the exceptional.

The Grey Zone: Where Planning & Economic Development Converge (60 mins)

Let’s start with a wild premise that will satisfy few who participate in modern day investment-related development approvals processes: the development industry isn’t bad. The municipality isn’t bad. Protectionist community interests aren’t bad. But Houston we have a problem: we are struggling to find overlap in the productive zone of common interests.
What could Plan B – where we tip over the apple cart of our conventional urban planning perspective and re-imagine it – look like? Can we stitch together an optimist’s world where we successfully address some big challenges of the day like ambitious vision setting, missing commercial middles and entrepreneurial ecosystem development, missing housing middles and housing attainability and affordability, asset management, market economics awareness and investment value proposition development, placemaking, development approval process efficiency and effectiveness, and brand and communications with effect? The answer is yes – well or we should at least try. But to get there, we need to be willing to let go of the past. In the “grey zone,” we liberate ourselves to design the future we imagine.

Canada to the Nth: Seeking Pathways to Yes in a Turbulent World* (60 mins)

Oh Canada. We need a new CAN-DO spirit!

From 6th to 18th productivity ranking of 38 OECD member nations between 1970 to 2022*. A facetious observer might say we are following Homer Simpson’s advice: “You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

From interprovincial trade barriers to workforce supply and housing, our challenges can seem daunting. Our future prosperity and economic competitiveness relies on tackling productivity challenges head on, and more aggressively.

Are there some coping tools as Step 1 that bridge over our self-protective Homer Simpson escape hatch? Are there some Step 2 things that might gather us around the organization, community, and country campfire of common cause to fix, to elevate, to legacy-build for future generations? Can we find more paradoxical inspiration in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche who declared that “efficiency is intelligent laziness”?

Well let’s scratch the itch a bit in this frank talk from a guy old enough to bend down to tie his shoes and wonder what else he can do while there – which affords perspective about the power creativity, innovation, and economic development and commerce have in a Canada searching for new ways forward.

*Src: RBC Economics June 4, 2024