People can dismiss Calgary as soul-less. A place full of people chasing money and speaking in the monotone language of economics. Let me refute that myth. Emphatically. In a twenty-four hour span of time, 3 Calgary-based community groups host 3 amazing speakers this week in Calgary: 1. Last night, The Western Muslim group hosted Dr. [...]
Pluralism in Canada –How can we talk with people we don’t trust, don’t like?
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011Why I stepped down as Bridges’ ED
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011May 2nd was auspicious. Canada elected a Conservative majority government, and I handed over the leadership reins of Bridges Social Development to a young engineer, Lindsay Mitchell. Bridges is a small Calgary-based voluntary organization that I founded in 2002 in response to an invitation from the President of Yemen and community leaders in that country—Yemen [...]
Order Is Great. It’s Bureaucracy That’s Stifling
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011By: ADAM BRYANT This interview with Lars Bjork, C.E.O. of QlikTech, a data software company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss or manager? A. It was in 1984. I had the opportunity to work in construction in New York, coming right out of [...]
Nuns question bosses’ worth
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011Richard Blackden, The Daily Telegraph Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is facing a call from four leading orders of Catholic nuns to review whether the pay awarded to chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and other top executives is excessive. The proposal will be put forward at the Wall Street bank’s annual general meeting next month by the [...]
International Women’s Day: A Power Conversation
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011International Women’s Day is a good time to talk about power. Do women of the world want to take power away from men? Is power a zero-sum game? ‘Power’ is a loaded word. In the hundreds of management and leadership texts published every year, and in the thousands of speeches delivered by corporate CEOs, heads [...]
Teaching integrity
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010For decades, we’ve been inoculating MBA students with ‘ethics’ courses and prescribing ‘leadership’ training for corporate managers. Yet, these antidotes to greed and sleaze haven’t always worked. How can we do a better job of teaching decision-makers how to lead in ways aligned to the values of their organization…and to their own values? Over [...]
Building bridges between polarities
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010People often accuse me of having a bridge fetish: Integrity Bridges… Canada Bridges… Yes, it’s true, I like bridges. I like driving over bridges. When I’m hiking, I like balancing on logs thrown across mountain streams by fellow hikers. In Calgary, I even like the plus-15s; bridges connecting buildings so we don’t have to freeze [...]