I was asked recently to provide some thoughts on what could be done to attract more women to the investment industry and, furthermore, into leadership roles.
It’s a complicated question. I’m keenly interested in the matter and have tried to educate myself about it, but I will be the first one to acknowledge that that’s not, as a man, a very strong position from which to weigh in.
The Inventor, in the beginning, devised an apparently benign contraption meant to disseminate information more effectively to specific people within specific facilities. Nobody anticipated what would come next.
How often have you found yourself on a street or in a building named after some once important person, and realized that you didn’t have the faintest idea who this person was and what he or she had accomplished?
I recently had a difference of opinion with a colleague at work regarding a business decision. My colleague and I could not resolve the issue at our level so it was escalated one level up.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been preoccupied with the very vexing issue of trust in the workplace. I say “vexing” because fostering genuine trust in the workplace has to be one of the most difficult nuts to crack of any that I can think of.
I live in Toronto, a predominantly English-speaking city, and have worked in English most of my professional life, but English is actually my second language. I grew up in Quebec and completed all my schooling in French, from grade school to high school, to college, to law school.
I’m a big, big fan of the idea that you have to make some time in your life to just stop and think. Not only is this important in order to maintain your sanity, but it also allows you to be more effective, as well as more creative in every aspect of your life.
We can’t always agree on everything. Nor, frankly, would it be desirable that we do.
Debate and disagreements are cornerstones of progress and innovation in all aspects of life and if it wasn’t for people disagreeing with each other from time to time — lone voices as well as groups of individuals large and small standing up against generally accepted views — many of the good and great things that we now take for granted — victories of reason such as human rights and modern science, for instance — would never have seen the light of day.
As I press “enter” to publish this article, I’m a few hours away from addressing an audience of leaders on the topic of courage in the workplace.
Words are almost superfluous in teaching the most important lessons of Judo, as the strong culture of the dojo, as perpetuated by the Senseis and the more experienced students, becomes the vehicle through which acceptable behaviours, as well as desirable values, are actively conveyed to new generations of judokas.
