The brotherhood and sisterhood of The Boss

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I remember the first time I heard a Bruce Springsteen song. It was in 1984 and the song was Dancing in the Dark. I was a 14 year old kid ready to be influenced by music but it would take a trip to Thailand 2 years later and a bootleg copy of Nebraska for me to really hear Springsteen for the first time.

I’m not really sure what it is about Springsteen that has so captured me. How is it that I’ve seen him 30 times in my life and continue to this day to find such incredible connection with his music is something to unpack for sure.

It started with his story telling. It is an incredible art to be able to tell vivid as life tales in under 4 minutes. Springsteen has always been hailed as a character writer and that is true of the motley crew of people he has documented or brought voice to through his songs. To do this requires an eye for the small things that we can all relate to and bring those to life while moving the story along. But all successful artists do that.

He’s maniacal in the way he constructs his music, placing single notes or creating a wall of sound the way he did on the song Born To Run — that opening is like getting punched in the face by music. He constructed that, piece by piece, sound by sound, over a 7 month period in the studio. He pulls from his head the sound and makes it real. But other artists do that as well.

Springsteen has picked his themes and has remained current from the 70’s through to today. He’s a working class hero that has never held a 9-5 job. He sings about the things we need to hear right when we need to hear them. The 70’s were freewheeling youth and touching on early adulthood. The 80’s were post-Vietnam reckoning, introspective relationship challenges and using his voice to highlight the inequalities many suffer. The 90’s were almost empty but again focused on bringing to life the stories of importance around border challenges in Southern California. The early 2000’s were repairing a broken world after 9/11 and the last decade has been prolific around parenthood, finding roots in the world and experimentation. Movies, books, broadway plays — he’s attacked us from every sense and medium and it has been a marvel to watch. Other artists have done some of this.

So what is it about Springsteen that has endured for decades in an industry where the average lifespan is measured in minutes? Part of it has to be him. His legend. Most of it is the brotherhood and sisterhood that surrounds him. Us. His fans.

My first good friends in life were Springsteen fans. Cordial at first, like dating, we would find key areas we all could talk about and then one night someone would put on a Springsteen album and we were bonded for life. Next would come the concerts and waiting in line with our brethren. No matter the background, the socio-economic status, age, religion, colour, or sex, we were there for one common reason and that was Springsteen. It is a common language, one that we all speak. It was a wide group of classes with a single pure thing in common and we all fit in. He is a leveller. When we sing his lyrics back to him he is teaching us connection and community.

He is a history class, an ethics class and the class clown. He takes his craft more seriously than most of us do. He gives us lessons every single night on doing the work. His concerts are legendary because of the concerts. There is nothing that he leaves in the tank and he does it this way every time he steps on the stage. There is no take, he gives openly.

If you’ve seen him in concert recently you will see parents singing along with their children. I know my role as a parent has been to make sure my kids have been home schooled on Springsteen. He has transcended generations and by doing this he has families singing from the same page for a few hours at a time.

Springsteen sings about things that are timeless — that you could listen to today or tomorrow and still resonate. He’s been able to capture moments in life that don’t get stale (ok, 57 channels aside…). There is always a song that either reminds us of better days or helps us gain perspective on where we are in this world. And of courses the songs that help us remember the friends we’ve made. I also think about those days ahead when my kids are on their own and they hear a Springsteen song and are reminded of their youth and guilt forces them to pick up the phone and call their old man. It’s all about connection isn’t it?

That’s the brotherhood and sisterhood of The Boss.

Get to the root

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This world is way too complex. Every day we have to work hard to do the seemingly simplest things and we’ve come to accept it as normal. It’s normal to have to fill things in triplicate. It’s normal that it takes a week to do your tax return (or pay someone who has spent a lifetime learning how to do it). It’s normal to wait in line to renew a drivers license. It’s normal to visit a community centre to vote in an election. It’s normal that I can send a friend money immediately but it takes 15 business days for a refund.

Why?

We’ve created a very complex infrastructure that makes it harder and harder to get things done quickly. Our countries have been built on top of archaic principles that haven’t adapted with time, instead we’ve layered on that complexity when we should be clearing it to the root and rebuilding to the times. This complexity uses too much effort and wastes money.

Attacking the root means cleaning up the things that aren’t important or relevant anymore or that can be simplified. How many times have you heard of an arcane law still in effect in cities around the world. Laws that have been in place for 100 years that only made since in a different era. We wonder why it is still there, laugh about it and forget it but it is emblematic of a bigger human challenge.

We like progress at the expense of doing the work.

It is much easier to simply add new laws or new provisions to old laws that don’t make sense in order to make them relevant. We do this to ourselves because it is easier to do it than it is to strip the legislation down and remove those laws that are no longer relevant. Our tax infrastructure is a perfect example. The regulations change so often that we now require an entire industry of people to make sure our filings are accurate. We simply hide bad code by writing more bad code. Our world runs because of this complexity. This results in humanity having to support an entire industry that is needed to support businesses so revenue is recognized in the correct way. We have added complexity instead of solving the core problem.

City infrastructure is a good example of attacking the root. In Canada we typically have 2 seasons: Winter and construction. There is a reason we have so much construction and it is a lesson in root planning. We live on top of pipes and sewers and electrical grids — all the amenities and complexities and necessities of modern life. When our infrastructure gets old, we don’t simply patch it where we can and move on. We don’t build a secondary pipe that bypasses the first pipe and call it a day like we do with our laws and tax systems. We know that won’t hold up so we eventually dig up roads, we pull out corroded pipes and replace them with modern materials that will last for 50 years. We attack the root cause of the problem and we solve it. Why? Because if we didn’t do it this way, we wouldn’t be able to flush our toilets, turn on our TVs or get clean water reliably. A breakdown of these essential services would cost the cities their taxes, businesses their revenue opportunities and both would suffer from lowered reputations. This would eventually lead to slow employment growth, lower the population growth, a decrease in the inability to attract more businesses and, ultimately, irrelevance.

Solving the root is not an option for our city infrastructure so why don’t we learn from this?

Nature has been telling us what to do from the get go. When I was younger, I watched my mother garden. She would start in the winter by potting plants in the house and let them have warmth and sunlight as they waited for spring. Once the weather was right, my mother would take the plants outside, dig them up right down to the roots and plant them in the earth. Those roots, the things that made the plants part of the planet, fed and nurtured their growth, allowing them to bear the fruits they were intended to. Without the roots, they are inorganic, dead things that disappear back into the ground. Deep solid roots are what make or break your harvest. That hasn’t ever changed. Plants haven’t altered their evolution for anything better because a root is as simple and effective as possible. No complexity, no evolution. No root? No plant. No plant? No fruit.

The root is the thing.

Even as we adopted technology into our lives it was used to mask the complexity we’ve built around us. Our computers and smartphones, now incredibly powerful machines, handle a tremendous amount of complexity that masks the root of many problems. We’ve come to rely on them for the simple things like entertainment — a portable version of a record player or television set — but we’ve also started to rely on their ability to hide the complexity, the root problems, all behind a submit button. This is both a blessing and a curse. It ties things up in a nice little bow — all those loose ends that we’ve struggled with until now — and we can let the code handle the root challenge. This is great! Until you realize that we’ve built so much complexity in order to avoid solving the root that eventually no humans will understand the way our systems work. Maybe this is why we fear true AI?

Companies face this challenge all the time. The good ones aren’t afraid to dig up their roots and replant or even rethink the soil they’ve chosen. The industry calls it a pivot but it is really digging deep enough to solve the problem facing them instead of piling on more dirt and hoping. The brave companies do this. Some companies make it work, others simply can’t.

Our cities may be getting the infrastructure right but some of the things we are doing on the ground aren’t even close to attacking the root. We accept that a certain number of our residents will be challenged to find work or afford a home or even have access to fresh food. We’ve built an entire infrastructure around this very challenged subset of our population. Community housing and local food banks abound. Here we are focusing on solving the problem for today, not solving for the root cause that focuses on eradicating it completely. There should be no reason we have to have any of these social services if we help solve the root cause of each. It may cost a lot up front. It may require a shift in thinking. It may require a lot of patience. But solving the root means eliminating the problem not just pushing it off to the next generation.

So many of our decisions are made in the context of the present. I’m as guilty as the next person. Who has time to stop and dig when there are so many pressing issues compounding daily? Eventually you will end up solving for problems that aren’t relevant to your success. These are just the outcomes of losing sight of your root. And we all know that without a solid root, there is no fruit.

Are all habits bad?

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So many books have been written about building habits. Tiny moves in a different direction towards changing a behaviour. Some advocate large transformation steps, others smaller incremental ones. I’ve read them all, tried them all but I’m pretty sure I’m a routine guy, not a habit guy. Is there a difference?

Habits have always been a negative thing that I’m doing. As a kid I had a habit of sucking my thumb (just until my late teens mind you). I had a habit of skipping classes in high school. I had a smoking habit. I had a habit of drinking too much coffee, eating too many bags of chips. Habits were bad.

Habits are always things that I seem to want to quit so I read all those books and what I pulled from them was mostly around building routines. Routines lead to habit change so the emphasis for me was always on building routines around everything I do.

When I was young and stupid I smoked cigarettes. It’s hard to quit that habit so I looked for an easy routine change that would help. There isn’t one by the way. I settled on a small computerized pocket aide called Lifesign. It reoriented my smoking pattern and then gradually, almost imperceptibly, reduced the number of cigarettes that I smoked in a day until 45 days after I started using the machine I had kicked the habit. By forcing me to change my routine around smoking I was able to quit.

The problem with habits is that the perception is you need to work at something for between 14-21 days until that thing becomes a habit. I don’t know if that is true but having something just become a habit isn’t enough to keep it a habit. Just doing it for that long does not mean it will stick. Building a routine gives it a chance. Although, come to think of it, it took less time for me to make smoking a habit and probably takes far less time for people to make drugs a habit…Bad habits are absolutely easier to pick up then to shed.

So I’ve given up on the term “habit” and will stick with routines. Habits are dead to me until I start smoking again and pick up hard drugs.

I have an exercise habit. I work out regularly and have since I quit smoking over 20 years ago. It was hard to get into it but I did it through sheer routine building. It starts with timing of when to go to the gym. The most efficient for me is first thing in the morning — early — so routine #1 is to get up early. That has cascading effects on what I do the night before. My family is a notoriously late night family so I had to break that habit with a new routine of getting to bed relatively early. “Calling it quits early” as my mother would say as would get to bed at a decent time. To do this I had to fight the habit of coffee after dinner, TV shows after 10pm and reading in bed until all hours. I had to kill 30 habits in order to make myself fit. All that before I even made it to the gym!

Now my gym routine is easy. I lay out my gym clothes on a chair next to my bed the night before so when I wake up I immediately get dressed in them and I’m committed and in the right frame of mind. It is now automatic. I’m up, downstairs and on my way to the gym within minutes of waking. It is as much of a routine as breathing for me now. Sometimes I don’t even remember doing it. That’s when you know it is a routine.

I approach much of my day like this. It takes a little forethought but it is deliberate thinking that builds routine.

I’ve recently taken up daily writing and added it to my morning routine. I prep the night before by setting up my computer so it is waiting for me in my writing spot. Now when I wake up, get dressed in my gym clothes and head downstairs, I grab a cup of coffee, and sit down to write for 30 minutes with headphones on, cancelling the outside world. I get 1000 words done and then I’m gone to the gym.

It isn’t magic but it does require preparation and commitment to the process.

I really began to understand routine when I had kids and, oddly enough, a dog. Both require strict routines in order to create order. I had the added challenge of having twins so without routine there is just absolute chaos. There was routine around feeding, changing and sleeping for the kids (oh and keeping them ALIVE). Walking, discipline and pack rules for the dog. The kids forced me to be patient about building routines for them and us as a family. The dog, well, she trained me pretty well to adhere to her routines…

If you want to understand why we humans do what we do and dive deep into the psychology of change to break and create habits that’s your call. That’s not habit change. No amount of book learning gave me motivation or the tools to change habits. It seems to me that the books I read were coping mechanisms for me to hold on to the bad habits a little while longer — I had to learn what the deep seated psychosis was that made me do what I do. I stalled, read more books, stalled, read more books. I did this until I realized that the books wouldn’t give me the answers I needed and I was on my own to do it or not.

Some routines will work for you — other won’t. That’s just reality. Don’t let your bad habit of reading books on habits stop you from building better routines for yourself.

Maybe the first routine you should build is how to put the books down…

Why it’s hard to work from home

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There used to be a stigma about working from home. The story always starts with sleeping in, working in pyjamas and binge watching Netflix. There was an air of unprofessionalism to it all. Companies had policies against it because it was so egregious. There was a specific type of job that was always better suited to this type of work — creatives, coders, writers, artists. That’s it. The rest of us needed to be in the office because, well, just because. If this pandemic has shown us anything it is that being productive from home is a necessity and we were completely unprepared for any of it — well, most of us anyway.

Working from home is not easy. I’ve done it for 9 of my working years and it takes a very different mentality than working from the office. It takes a strict adherence to routine in order to work and most of us don’t have that in us. The routine isn’t just about waking up and getting to the office, that’s just our autopilot guiding us. We know that if we don’t at least get to work then we don’t get paid. The routine for working from home is completely different and requires a discipline muscle that does not exist in most of us today. Waking up and getting to work, at home or at the office, is not the problem. It’s what happens during working hours where a specific muscle needs to be flexed and people that work from home have it.

Working from home has always been seen as a privilege — even today during a pandemic there are many service and front line workers that don’t have the luxury of working from home. It is a unique segment brought on by the way we work and the tools we have at our disposal. Being able to work from home is because of how work has evolved. Working from home 20 years ago meant you ran a daycare in your living room, today it could mean you run a multi-million dollar digital business. The only difference is that we are living in the most connected and bandwidth-rich time in our history — and it will only get more so.

Yet, despite the fact we all live on tools designed for remote work (Google Drive, Hangouts/Zoom, Slack and email) all day everyday, we do it from the office, messaging coworkers instead of talking to them. These tools were designed for remote work and remote collaboration but we’ve been using them wrong this entire time. We’ve been remote workers hiding in the offices around the world and we didn’t even know it.

The stigma is what is blocking us. That fact that you can be productive at home has been ignored. There is very little training when it comes to how to work from home and make sure we all balance life outside of work. The digital tools we use don’t come with instructions on how — and more importantly, when — we should all use them. We are handed an email address, a Slack account and told to communicate with each other. Some companies aren’t even that clear and have multiple messaging services that they use. This just creates confusion and a loss of productivity. The lack of teaching on how and when to use these tools has made them overflow with internally company flotsam. This is the problem that needs to be solved.

When you work from home you see the gaps in most companies that allow it. If you work for a company that allows you to work from home — we see a lot of people “allowed” to work from home 1-2 days per week — it is most likely seen as a perk. Make no mistake, if the only support WFH employees get are the same tools they have in the office, without training or tools, this is not a perk. It is less stressful and there is less scrutiny working from an office. It is EASIER to work from the office. Period.

It comes down to a mind shift inside the company. If work from home is going to be something that employees do, then they need the tools, training and support to do so. Companies must take the needs of the WFH employee as seriously as they do those that work from the offices. They are cheaper (no snacks, no infrastructure costs, etc.), have a higher quality of life (when supported), more dedication to the company and can be more productive if support properly.

The future of work is not all at home. It can’t be for everyone all the time for obvious reasons. Humans are social beings mostly. The day is divided between working hours and personal time and this is the largest challenge that lands on WFH employees. Dividing the day is a crucial skill. Most people new to this world end up feeling tired and burdened and work more hours or extend their work into their personal time. Inexperienced managers or executives who are not well versed in how this works put added pressure on employees and themselves. They feel that by adding additional reporting processes or check up meetings they will be able to keep tabs on employees. The right combination of faith in their hiring process, confidence in proven employees, the right tools/training and trust that the work will get done as a result are table stakes. The difference is in the mindset of the employers today. Working from home is not a perk anymore to be looked at as a day off. It needs to be harmonized with the rest of the business and institutionalized at the top.

Only when this shift in mindset happens will we get to a point where there is no differentiation between working from home and just plain work.

Seeking deeper fulfillment

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My mother was someone that I admired greatly. All mothers should be admired because they are mothers. They are the clock that keeps the beat of the household while holding down their job, knowing where everything is and where you’ve been. It is uncanny how disproportional the genders’ capabilities are at juggling this world but when it comes to mothers, there are none like them.

My mother was a principled and driven woman. Aside from raising four kids — including one of us who was profoundly deaf — she managed to find causes she could fight for and influence. I didn’t realize it until much later in life of course, that her drive to make change was there all the time. She was always involved in our neighbourhood associations when we were kids, even running our local activities group for years while we were in grade school. She was there trying to make our hood safer.

She was a closet activist and one of the most well-read people I’ve ever met. She studied Russian History and, aside from her family, her great love was Southeast Asia. Her parents were diplomats from Europe and is the only relative that has ever had a sweet sixteen debutante ball. But you wouldn’t know that of her because that was who she was. I think she was a person that was put here to shake things up a little. Her parenting was demure but you didn’t want to have her wrath upon you and that was her style. She was never really angry but you didn’t want to disappoint her. That was worse.

My mother worked for the greater good. When all her kids were in school she started working at CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, as a project lead. CIDA was at one point the steward of much of the Government of Canada’s international development budget. The organization would run projects to help developing nations build a sustainable economic and social path for themselves. These projects were specific, challenging, all-consuming and impactful. The programs my mother ran were at the community level and on the ground in countries that were not very hospitable to women in positions of authority. Her first posting was to Dacca, Bangladesh for 3 years. Her second was Islamabad, Pakistan for the better part of 4 years arriving a few months before a coup and a few years before 9/11. Not easy but she was there for the greater good.

She was unique in that she wouldn’t live on the Canadian compound in these countries. She would find a home in a neighbourhood and live around people she was working to help. Her friends were not other Canadians she was working with, they were her neighbours, local coworkers and people she was working to help. She was there to understand, to move things in the right direction. She was there for purpose and could only do it if she was in it, not on the periphery.

My mother retired on principle while she was working on her last program in Northern Africa on de-mining Sudan and surrounding countries. She said it was the toughest thing she’d worked on and that says a lot for a woman who was teaching Muslim women their rights inside Muslim countries. But that wasn’t the thing that made her leave her mission. The Canadian Government was cutting our committed contribution to foreign aide such that she couldn’t stand around and be a part of it. She retired early on principle and is the only person that I know that really meant it.

Like so many of us as we age and reflect we start to search for meaning in our lives and tend to look to our accomplishments as a way to judge the book we’ve written. My mother was never that person. Her life was reflected in the outcomes and impact she had on those around her. She probably knew that she wouldn’t live long enough to see her efforts have an impact but she must have been at peace with that because she continued to try to make her little part of the world a better place by helping those in need. Her life gave meaning to others and I think that gave meaning to hers — although she never really verbalized it that way. She found great joy in her job because she was slowly, meticulously, building layer upon layer upon layer of impact that have had a cumulative effect on thousands or maybe tens of thousands of people around the world.

This is what I think of when I try to model what I do with work and what fulfillment looks like to me. It is the standard I hold myself to when I reflect on my short life and where I would like it to go and the impact my efforts could contribute. How and where can I find a deeper and greater reason for being other than for success on a spreadsheet? My mother set the bar very high, her quest was to reshape her part of the world one person at a time and if I judge myself against her example I am not there yet.

It’s taken me most of my adult life to figure out that the hole in the work that I’ve done is because of the example my mother has set for me. I didn’t quite understand that in order to really be fulfilled, to be satiated with the role I play and the place I hold in this world, I need to be a part of something bigger — something that makes us better. I hope to make the community I live in a better place for my kids to grow in to. I hope to shape my kids is a way that makes them hold dear the lessons that my mother implanted in me and do it by example.

Anne Woodbridge made an impact here, one that will never get recognized beyond those who knew her. She did it because she loved doing it. She loved the people, the places, the challenges and most of all she loved doing the good work because it meant she was moving forward. Moving forward in the right way always brings fulfillment.

There HAS to be a plan

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I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid plans. They always seem to be the opposite of being agile. They have rules. They are strict. They don’t allow for any kind of deviations. They are, well, plans. And I mostly hate them.

But not right now.

The world is in a weird place. It’s not only that we are desperately fighting a foe that is cunning and ruthless. The human race has done that before. It’s that we are locked in our homes and locked out of life. There is no plan for where we are right now, that part is clear. We’ve never been here before and, for the most part, the global people are rolling with it as best as can be expected. Most of our global and local leaders are doing their part to put the population at ease and we all seem to be slowly settling in to the new normal routine of remote working and supporting each other. We are also learning how to live with our families or yearning for company if you live alone.

The real question is what’s next? How long can we go on like this? The answer cannot be we don’t know and forever. There has to be a plan.

Shelter in place is not a plan. Nor is wait and see. We need a global agreement on what “safe” looks like. When will it be safe to be allowed back into the world? Telling us that our current situation could last for 12-18 months is not a plan. It may be an uncomfortable fact but it’s not a plan.

It really is time to lead. To give us all hope that when this ends, we will be ok. Life will come back to whatever life looks like and we will be able to share a meal with family and friends again.

We can’t control the unknown so there is no reason to speculate on what exact day we will have control of the spread or when a vaccine will be ready. We can’t plan for that so let’s just say that it will come some time in the future. We also can’t wait for that to be a reality before we are able to get back to work and life. A little hope here, a little leadership here, would go a long way.

What does a safe enough world look like before a cure? What are the metrics that we need to hit in order for us to be released? When we hit those milestones, who goes back to work/school first? What businesses are allowed to be re-opened? What is our new normal when we go to restaurants? Grocery stores? Movies? Concerts? What restrictions will there be on travel? How can we ensure there is not a rebound because of our negligence in adhering to these rules? What are the new new rules of life engagement?

You know, a plan.

I’m not asking for a date for when this will happen. We just need to know that once we cross some magic recovery threshold (0 new cases for 2 weeks?) our leaders have a plan for what’s next. We can’t make a recovery plan as it is happening the way we did when this started (and continue to do today).

It is this uncertainty that humans are battling right now. I think we’ve adapted very quickly to our new schedules and, except for the future Darwin Award winners out there, have tried our hardest to keep our families, friends and communities safe. A lot has been asked of us and we have answered with a profound and thorough response. And as more draconian measures are put on us we have a right to ask harder questions of our leaders. We need some give as more and more is taken.

This uncertainty could be eliminated by laying out how we think we will recover — knowing that it will evolve and doesn’t have an exact start date. We have a lot of time on our hands, thinking time. Our children are asking us the hard questions and we have no answers other than wait and see. We need some sort of sign that our leaders are really thinking about the future. A small injection of optimism by just talking about what’s next would go a long way right now.

The other side of this will be hard. It will be the defining moment of a generation. A shared experience that simply reminds us that we are neighbours on this rock despite the distance between us all. We have seen the best in humanity during the harshest of hours and it has happened without thought or threat. We are ready to embrace what comes next, we just need hope.

And a plan.

The power of the very next

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In 2016 my son Jack had a headache. It was severe enough to prompt a kid that never called home because he was sick to do just that. I was nearby at work and made my way to the school to grab him and bring him home for some Advil and care from his mom.

I dropped him off and thought nothing of it. Went on with my day as usual. Picked up some dinner on my way home — Pho — and sat and ate a regular meal. After dinner Jack went up to his room to read and the rest of us finished dishes and started gearing down for the night. He came back down from his room a few minutes later and said that he was having a hard time reading, that the words weren’t making sense, then he blanked out. He said he was feeling sick so I raced him up to the bathroom only to have him enter a full seizure.

This is where my fundamental approach to life had to be altered.

A 911 call and an ambulance ride to our Children’s Hospital found us in uncharted waters. We found out that night that Jack had a growth behind his right ear but it was obscured by blood so we would have to wait for the body to naturally disperse the blood before we could see what we were really up against. After many tests and some very difficult phone calls home, Jack was admitted for an extended stay and we set upon our harrowing journey into this unknown.

The consequences were big with this one. There were monumental uncertainties that, no matter how many ways or times I would ask, there just weren’t answers that would completely satisfy my need to know. I found myself asking and asking and getting frustrated with the lack of clarity to help ease our minds. I would immediately jump to the bigger picture as this is what I was prone to do. In my mind I needed to see the path backwards. To start with what the problem was and work to a solution. This is what I’ve done my entire life as an entrepreneur — trying to solve a problem that, for the most part, was a made up hypothesis. So I used that approach with Jack and his angry brain.

This is where my fundamental approach to life had to be altered. There were so many uncontrollable outcomes that to focus on those high-level challenges would leave me a hobbled mess but I needed to help. To be there for Jack and his brother and his mother. So I watched what his doctors were doing and saying and started to emulate their diagnostic approach. They would do rounds to their patients and observe how their night unfolded. They would ask more questions than anyone I know, trying to probe, to understand what really happened over night that the monitors and data weren’t telling them. They would get multiple perspectives from everyone in the room, ideas, anything, and then they would choose the very next step to take. They wouldn’t focus on the unknowns and try to clear a path that made sense to them, they would slowly, methodically decide on the very next step in the treatment for their patients. Then they would leave (often to 1000 questions from me) until returning for their afternoon rounds where, at the end of the questions, would make a decision on what the very next step in treatment would be. And this continue for our first 3 week stay in the hospital.

Now, all along this path, our doctors and nurses would help us understand what was going on and they were real with us. Telling us almost the truth but making sure not to over simplify or hypothesize. They wouldn’t let themselves do what I was doing. Looking at best and worst case scenarios, they would simply tell me what they’ve observed and what that means. Every day was an exercise in patience and observation. Slow movements forward on some days, zero on others. It was painful but taught me a valuable life lesson and one that I still observe today.

Up to this point I was not a patient man. My expectations were that my teams aim for something, move quickly to get there, take action immediately and then move on. Sometimes what I perceived as a lack of visible forward motion meant that I caused a massive amount of angst among my team which, when in a leadership position, creates an unhealthy environment to be around. No one is able to get their work done if someone is constantly changing the game in mid-play.

What I realized from Jack’s doctors is that, in order for me to help and to remain sane, I needed to focus on the very next task at hand. This meant that I needed to stop thinking of the big picture — to stop trying to solve for something that hadn’t been identified yet — and start narrowing my scope to what was directly in front of me. What was the very next thing I needed to do for Jack. So I did. I stopped asking questions that no one had answers to and instead started asking what was happening next and what was I supposed to do to support my family. Once I did this that feeling of overwhelm vanished. I wasn’t constantly thinking in the future (which, at the time, was bleak), I was making sure Jack was receiving the right medications, that he was active in his routine, that he was eating properly, entertained properly and connecting with his family. At the same time, I was present for him, my wife and his brother. I kept everyone in our family up to date but made sure everyone was focused on the things that we could control and that we did know. Not the “what ifs” — although I did allow myself to venture there late at night as I slept in Jack’s hospital room. That was my time to try to understand why he was chosen for this. My pity parties didn’t bring him or my family down, it was just me and those were like little bouts of therapy in the dark, quiet hospital.

I practice what I learned back then still to this date. Taking an approach of what is the very next thing I can do has been the greatest (and hardest) lesson I’ve ever learned. It has led to an increase in my patience and a pragmatic approach to solving some of my largest personal and work problems.

There really is a learning lesson to be had in even the darkest of times and this was mine.

The Great Leveling

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I have been unemployed and it sucks.
I have been broke and it sucks.
I have had zero prospects and it sucks.
I have had no money in my bank and it sucks.
I have not known where my next meal will come from and it sucks.

It lasted what felt like an eternity for me but it was probably no longer than 3 months. I remember spending my last $7 on food and thinking “that’s it, nothing left.” I remember having to call my mortgage company to ask for a deferral and not be able to afford the $75 change fee. There are many things that test you but nothing more than not being able to make a living to support your family.

I pulled out of this but many can’t. I pulled out because I had family and friends that helped. Many don’t. If there is one thing that I learned during this time it was to understand how close I was to financial ruin. Most of us have weeks, some of us have days. This reality is playing out today as COVID-19 is destroying the little bits of equity we’ve built in our lives in a matter of weeks. And it sucks.

Canada saw 1,000,000 newly unemployed workers in March due to the mass closures to stem the spread of the virus. A hard reality is that many of those businesses that shut down in early March may not have the financial ability to re-open once the country starts leaving their homes. April will be no better when it comes to unemployment and burden it will have on our system will be tremendous but necessary. How does a country keep its economy running without the engine that feeds it?

Lost in the shuffle here are those that were already in that position before all of this descended upon us. Those Canadians that were already living in subsidized housing, relied on the government or food banks to have access to food and whose job prospects were bleak to begin with. They have been voices that have been trying to break through but just weren’t being heard and now, with the masses out of work and screaming, their voices are being suppressed even more.

This economic shutdown is giving many Canadians a glimpse into the world that hundreds of thousands of the population live all the time. Housing and food insecurities abound but as we all go through our days, go ignored except by the small but mighty organizations that fight on the front lines on their behalf. Or we learn to ignore them. This time it’s hard to hide from it when the entire population will feel its impact. We will feel what it’s like to lose our jobs and to not have prospects. We will feel what it’s like to not be able to afford food or transportation. We’ve been forced to self-isolate to stem the spread but that is what it’s like for many today who have no money for social outings. Many of us will feel the sting of self doubt that creeps in when we feel useless or not in control of our lives anymore. This feeling compounds the longer you find yourself in this position. Sometimes it is completely debilitating and you get lost in it. This is that time we see how no Canadian should ever have to live yet, somehow, in our developed nation, people do. In every city food banks and community housing are a normal things. Accepted as part of society’s approach to solving a problem that shouldn’t exist in the land of opportunity and the free.

Maybe this will give us all the perspective we needed. Most of us balance our lives so close to the edge of financial success and failure that a couple of weeks of earn makes all the difference. Lose the earn and the impact could be catastrophic. My motivation was always that any decision that I made could have me living in my house or a cardboard box on the street corner. That has kept me motivated and miserly since I was a kid because I still feel I’m a moment away from this happening and now I have a wife and 2 children that rely on me to make it work.

Maybe this global shutdown will give us perspective and more empathy for those that have been challenged to find healthy and meaningful work and must rely on social assistance to live. Instead of ignoring their stead in life, I hope knowing that it only takes a few weeks to have millions of people fall into similar situations will give us a greater perspective. Even perhaps a deeper level of empathy and commitment to keep fighting these challenges long after the CoronaVirus has been abated.

Perhaps the impact of stopping the economy will show us the importance of making sure all of us are taken care of, supported and given an opportunity to move up and on with our lives. The loudest voices here may be the newly unemployed and their needs are real but let’s not forget those that were there before that have been asking for this kind of treatment for years. Our goal should be to live in a country that has closed all community housing and food banks because we don’t need them anymore. And to let every Canadian work, earn and live with dignity and self-confidence.

As for me, I’m still scouting street corners for my box mansion for 4. Motivation is motivation and that’s mine.

The End of Celebrity

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In our old life celebrities brought with them intrigue, a glimpse to a better life, tossed with a little envy and a departure from day to day reality. It was fun while it lasted but this pandemic has shown their true colours — well, everyone’s true colours really. 

I’m as guilty as the next guy in my worship of celebrity. I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan, follow my favourite actors and athletes, I’ve lined up to get autographs, concert tickets and have had my photo taken with some of my heroes (well, not Springsteen…yet). But something has changed in the social media era. Celebrity has become an occupation not something that is a by-product of the thing they excel at. It is now a vocation.

Our heroes used to accomplish feats — top of the charts, on the big screen or on the field — and celebrity would follow as a result. They were known for hits and homeruns, goals, their legendary live performances. They did the reps. They played their local fairs. Even the Beatles played 10,000 hours at dive bars before they had a glimpse of success. They did their “time” and they earned our respect and admiration.

Celebrities were never business people either. Bill Gates was the least charismatic CEO when he started and ran Microsoft. Jeff Bezos is secretive and certainly, for most of his life at Amazon, stayed low key. The most gregarious of the admired leaders may have been Richard Branson who used stunts to draw attention to his brands. Even Mark Zuckerberg made being awkward an art! Most business leaders were relegated to business magazines and book indexes.

Not so anymore. Social media and the fact that everyone has a desire to have their voice heard (including, er, me…here…I guess) means we will hear those voices and in times like this we tend to look to them for guidance and reassurance. But why? They are celebrities and most are wholly and completely unqualified to give advice so they do what they’ve always done. Stand in front of a needing audience to use their celebrity to…beg?

In the old world, celebrities lent their name and their brand to help elevate causes. I didn’t see anything wrong with that but perhaps I was naive. We would see concerts raising money for the  drought-stricken Africa or the plight of the farmer and think “they get it. They are helping.” We stood up to cancer and appreciated the awareness that celebrity brought to the cause. We donated mightily and the celebrity had a hand in that simply by being there and I felt deep appreciation for their time to help such a noble cause.
Then the pandemic hit and those same celebrities, standing in front of me on my screen are doing the same thing yet I feel disgusted watching them.

What changed?

The folks asking me to dig into my wallet and donate for relief during this terrible economic time are the top 1% in terms of net worth and wealth on the PLANET and they are asking me to reach into my limited pool of funds, pull out dollars and donate? Everyone of the other 99% of the world’s population has been affected by what is going on or will be soon and they, the ultra rich, sitting in their 10,000 square foot homes with stocked pantries are asking US to give? How did this happen.

There are celebrities that have always used their power and coercion for good. Pink of all people has donated millions to causes throughout her career and has done so again here. There are more out there and we should focus our admiration on them because of their character. Bill Gates has made a life after Microsoft and will be remembered as the greatest philanthropist in human history and is doing it again around the pandemic. Jack Dorsey has donated $1 billion to this fight. These are the people that we should be looking to, not as celebrities, but as responsible humans doing what humans should be doing. Helping because they CAN help and SHOULD help.

I don’t need to see Elton John sitting safely in his mansion chatting with other celebrities about how sad the world is. I don’t think the Queen of England is suffering being in isolation in her castle. We don’t need to see Arod and JLo sunning by their pool telling us to stay home. Shut up and contribute back to society what we have all given you. Donate. Spend some of that money they we’ve all contributed to your castles and pools to help the people who need it the most. The world doesn’t need a tour of your pantries, the world needs you, the rich, to step up and help balance the imbalanced. Right now.

Free online concerts are great fun and they probably hit the artists with a little bit of nostalgia but we know we have to stay in place, we know we have to protect our loved ones, we know the world is wounded right now. What I don’t understand is why these same celebrities aren’t doing what is right by their fans. Contribute, donate, make a difference to the humans of earth by being humane. 

In the old world, celebrities could be vapid and just be celebrities as a profession. Coming into the new world, we are taking names and notes of those that contribute their names but not some notes and those which are showing their true character above all else.

Video: Why you should be where people love or where people hate – with Density founder Andrew Farah

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There is a word that keeps cropping up when it comes to mobile anything – density. It is such a great word unless there isn’t any. There are 3 axis for mobile these days: Context, location and density. Context is easy to start with: Is it morning, noon or night? Is it raining, sunny or snowing? Location is getting easier (and VERY slowly getting more accurate): Standing in a stadium, restaurant or train station? New York, New Jersey or Philadelphia? Density is a little more challenging. It looks for the answer of how many people are nearby or in a shop or are using an app in a specific region. The problem is that to make key mobile marketing decisions you need accuracy on all three. Hence, the three axis of mobile.

Today’s guest is Andrew Farah, founder of the aptly-named Density. They install in/out counters in the doors of small and medium-sized businesses to do one thing: Count people entering and leaving the business. Seems simple enough but the challenges and the impact of what they are doing are many and wide-ranging.