Douglas Magazine - Aug/Sep 2020

AUG/SEP 2020

WORKING TOGETHER

TOWARD A MORE INCLUSIVE FUTURE

WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED? HOW B.C. LOST OUT BIG TIME ON THE POTENTIAL CANNABIS GOLD RUSH

EXTREME MAKEOVER VICTORIA’S AMBITIOUS PLAN FOR THE ARTS & INNOVATION DISTRICT

LEADERSHIP

LEANING IN ROYAL ROADS’ DR. PHILIP STEENKAMP ON COURAGE AND EMPATHY

Local leaders share insights into navigating massive change

ESSENTIAL INNOVATION STARFISH MEDICAL ANSWERS THE CALL

IN UNCERTAIN TIMES SPECIAL THIS ISSUE

Douglas’s first guest editor Ian Chisholm of Roy Group PM41295544

Kimberley Nemrava, Leading Through Crisis project lead, Innoweave

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LEADERSHIP ISSUE

CONTENTS

16

FEATURES

16 Leaning Into the Challenges of Our Times

Guest editor Ian Chisholm sits down with Dr. Philip Steenkamp, president of Royal Roads University, to discuss empathy and courage — and the core values of leadership.

34

20 Leadership in Uncertain Times

As organizations try to plan for unknown challenges ahead, there is a critical need for leaders who understand how to navigate massive change. Douglas explores the evolving role of leadership and how it applies to your organization. BY ALEX VAN TOL

28 Extreme Makeover: Creating a Hub for Innovation

The City of Victoria’s ambitious plan, Victoria 3.0, proposes an entirely new neighbourhood, the Arts and Innovation District, that will revamp a downtrodden area of downtown into an inspiring showcase of B.C. architecture and sustainable design. BY ANDREW FINDLAY

34 What the Heck Happened?

When cannabis was legalized, B.C. was poised to profit big time from this new gold rush. But almost two years later, approvals have been slow, supply short, customers disappointed and confusion high. BY JODY PATERSON

28

DEPARTMENTS 6 FROM THE EDITOR

A note from guest editor Ian Chisholm.

9 IN THE KNOW United Engineering’s big project, the Build Back Victoria experiment, adjustments at Backfit and why now might be a good time to start a business.

46 LAST PAGE

StarFish Medical’s essential innovation.

INTEL (BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE) 40 DIVERSITY

Together, toward a more inclusive future.

BY RUTH MOJEED

41 ENTREPRENEUR

Is this your leadership moment?

BY JIM HAYHURST

44 MINDSET

The case for cancelling toxic leadership.

BY ERIN SKILLEN

4 DOUGLAS

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JEFFREY BOSDET/DOUGLAS MAGAZINE

A NOTE FROM THE GUEST EDITOR

The Courage to Chart a New Course

YEARS FROM NOW, we will share stories about this time. About the seizing, sinking feeling of being in over our heads. About the meteoric impact COVID-19 has had on the landscape of our organizations, the communities our organizations serve, our teams. How it has ruptured the bedrock — the core — of the way we experience our own leadership. I don’t know how my experience of the last three weeks maps over yours, but I would like to.

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6 DOUGLAS

That’s how I started a letter to our clients early in April, when the pandemic was still new. We were scrambling to do something that in a country like Canada we are not used to doing — adapting at pace. At Roy Group, we were trying to catch our sinking hearts as the cancellations rolled across our inboxes. And George Floyd was still alive. Little did we know that the rupturing bedrock had only just begun.

How things have changed in the intervening months. Pretty sure I’m speaking for the South Island’s entire business community when I say we’ve all been asked to step forward into new ways of leading — including, for me, this opportunity to be Douglas’s first-ever guest editor. We’ve walked the useless parts of our businesses out the back door of the bar. We’ve seen the parts of ourselves where the cracks let the light in.

A distilled focus has And we have more fully acknowledged the biases we emerged. We engaged carry and the problems we unknowingly contribute that extra gear we to. We have readied ourselves to emerge into a new order of things this fall. didn’t even know we As my conversation with Royal Roads University had. We dug deep, President Philip Steenkamp reveals in this issue and discovered a of Douglas, a good number of us in business have quietly reoriented ourselves around the tenet of resourcefulness that — courage. Courage to change familiar, well-received unbeknownst to us in offerings into something wholly different to suit a new mode of delivery. Courage to open conversations all our hurried, harried we’d been avoiding because they once seemed hamster-wheeling — too uncomfortable. Courage to look inside and had been there all along. acknowledge what’s broken, and what we are now prepared to heal. And the courage to chart a new course — one that feels more authentic and aligned, for our organizations, our communities and for our inner selves.

Contributions from Ruth Mojeed, Erin Skillen and Jim Hayhurst are included to nudge our leadership along.

In our feature story on leading through uncertainty, crisis expert Kimberley Nemrava walks us through the well-documented stages of disaster, giving us permission to feel what we’re feeling (we’re at what Nemrava calls the “deep fatigue” part of the cycle, on the off chance that this rings a bell) and delivering solid tips for how to leverage the particular momentum that exists at different parts of the cycle.

While we may be wicked tired, we have also realized with a certain satisfaction that we are not built for easy. At all levels of our organizations, we are seeing leaders step forward to take on new roles and challenges. Our conversations are more courageous. We’re more courageous in carving out time to take better care of our minds and bodies. And we’re looking ahead, to refind an unpredictable future, with — you guessed it — courage.

— Ian Chisholm

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DOUGLAS 7

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

“This is likely the largest thing that’s come out of the upper harbour.”

— DAVE BUKOVEC, GENERAL MANAGER OF UNITED ENGINEERING

In early August, United Engineering used Dynamic Beast, the largest crane on the West Coast, to load the complete 1,000-tonne stacker reclaimer onto a barge for delivery to North Vancouver.

PHOTOS BY JEFFREY BOSDET/DOUGLAS MAGAZINE

[IN THE KNOW]

THINKING

BIG

Visitors to the Upper Harbour this summer may have been intrigued by the large blue and green structure at Point Hope Maritime shipyard.

United Engineering constructed the massive stacker reclaimer for EMS Technologies, who will ship it to North Vancouver for use at Neptune Terminals.

“It’s certainly a feather in our cap,” says Dave Bukovec, general manager of United, a Ralmax Group company.

“Many things had to come together for us to even be considered for this job: the shop capacity to fabricate, good people to do the fabrication, machining and erection, and a fully serviced assembly yard were critical.”

The project, whose estimated economic impact is $26.3 million, has attracted other companies looking to have a North American manufacturer.

“These things frequently come out of China,” Bukovec says.

“Customers like when they can get it somewhat local. They can do a certain amount of precommissioning, and they can come and look at it.

With COVID, there have also been big delays, so delivery is better domestically.”

DOUGLAS 9

DOWNTOWN PEDESTRIAN COUNTER Pre-closure: Saturday, June 6

CHECKING IN ON THE BUILD BACK VICTORIA EXPERIMENT

Saturday June 13

3,807

Saturday June 27

3,362

Saturday July 4

4,920 5,546

Saturday August 1

6,941

SOURCE: DVBA PEDESTRIAN COUNTER: DOWNTOWNVICTORIA.CA/PEDESTRIAN-COUNTS

IN JUNE, AS PART OF ITS BUILD BACK VICTORIA PLAN, THE CITY ANNOUNCED IT WOULD BE CONVERTING ON-STREET PARKING TO PATIO AREAS, CREATING NEW AREAS FOR FOOD TRUCKS AND TEMPORARILY CLOSING A SECTION OF GOVERNMENT STREET TO TRAFFIC.

T

HERE + HAPPENING

he popularity of the City’s plan to give restaurants and businesses the opportunity to expand their patios and services can be seen by the numbers: at the end of July, 94 applications had been received, with 69 approved and 11 in review.

“With a new outside patio and adding the 60 seats out there, it’s been a godsend,” says Demian Merino, general manager of the Bard & Banker. “It’s been so helpful in keeping people employed, and we’re getting busier and busier. I’d love to put some roofs on them and heaters inside, and keep them all-year round” The plans to transform Government Street into a

JO-ANN LORO/DOUGLAS MAGAZINE

WITH FILES FROM LAURA BROUGHAM

pedestrian priority zone from Humboldt Street to Yates Street had a more mixed reaction.

As owner of Migration Boutique, Sara Patterson is excited by the prospects and says there’s been plenty of Through the City’s new permit program, spaces on sidewalks, on streets, in parking spaces, and in plazas and parks are temporarily available for businesses to use. So far the City has positive feedback from her received 94 applications and approved 69. customers.

“Before COVID, we “Corporate says right across a less encouraging result. Myron imagined blocking off the the country — and even at our McLenan, manager of the Victoria street and having a market,” Broadmead store — sales are up, and Broadmead locations, believes Patterson says. “Then all the but for us downtown sales are initial lack of signage caused designers and businesses could down right now, and we feel that confusion. come out onto the street and might be some of it.”

“When pedestrians reach have their tents and have a retail The changes will remain in Johnson and Government and space on the street as well. We’ll place until October 31, although look to the right it looks like a definitely be approaching the City the City staff says the situation is construction area so what ends to see if that’s a possibility now.” flexible, and improvements will be up happening is they don’t walk The Running Room is one made, as needed. down there,” McLenan says. downtown business that has seen

[ BACK TO THE OFFICE ]

[ BOOST YOUR WEB TRAFFIC ]

[ VIEA GOES DIGITAL ]

In the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce’s virtual educational seminar Bringing Employees Back To Work, Denise Lloyd, Chief Engagement Officer at Engaged HR, presents tools to re-engage staff and implement strategies that ensure a smooth transition to a new normal.

September 1 | victoriachamber.ca

How to Get and Grow Your Website Traffic: The Basics is a free, interactive webinar from Women’s Enterprise Centre. Panelists Julianna Horvat and Karthik Balachander, marketing managers at Webnames.ca, will share tips on optimizing your site for relevance and your ideal buyers.

September 17 | biv.com/events

The virtual 14th Annual State of the Island Economic Summit offers panel sessions on themes such as Indigenomics, innovation, tourism, art and the digital economy, plenary presentations, problem-solving chat groups, one-on-one meetings and more. Registration opens in August.

October 27 to 29 | viea.ca

10 DOUGLAS

HOW THEY DID IT INNOVATE

BUSINESS IMPACT NEW COVID-19 RESOURCES

TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

BY LAURA BROUGHAM

ONEFEATHER LAUNCHED IN 2014 TO IMPROVE VOTING PROCEDURES IN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES — AND IS NOW TACKLING OTHER OUTDATED PROCESSES.

This local tech company is now working with more than 185 clients, and this year will launch an electronic assistance program for filing Secure Certificate of Indian Status renewals — currently done entirely on paper.

“A lot of this work is about disrupting or removing the archaic processes that, either by design or by accident, have continued to cause an economic imbalance and continue to isolate or marginalize Indigenous people,” says Lawrence Lewis, OneFeather’s founder.

In response to the pandemic, OneFeather launched a support service for Nations who are holding elections in 2020, which includes a resource kit with readyto-go templates and relief subsidies valued up to $3,000. In July, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) named the tech company as one of 17 recipients of its seed funding.

ADJUSTING PROCEDURES AT BACKFIT

BY LAURA BROUGHAM

AT BACKFIT CLINIC, chiropractors put together personalized treatment plans for patients to reach their health potential and to live pain free. As with many health-related businesses, COVID-19 has meant big changes.

CHALLENGE In a physical-distancing world, how can a handson chiropractic clinic reopen in a way that is safe, adheres to government and health authority regulations and still provides patients with the best possible service?

RESULT The smaller changes involved introducing new cleaning procedures, a screening process for clients, and requiring everyone to clean their hands when entering the building. On a much larger scale, Backfit reconfigured their physical space.

“We had to reformat a lot of how the physical spacing on our floor looked, because we had certain types of treatments at one end of the facility, and we realized that’s not going to work anymore,” says Jason Prescott, clinic director. “We had to basically gut the entire bottom floor, where the gym used to be, sell that equipment and reposition some of the treatment tables into that space. Some smaller equipment was moved upstairs for one-on-one training.”

While it is hard to predict how the pandemic will shape chiropractic care going forward, Craig Bentham, one of the co-owners of the clinic, says at least one change will be permanent.

“We were pretty old school originally, and it’s pushed us to have a YouTube channel and social media presence,” Bentham says. “It’s getting great feedback, and our patients are really appreciating that extra information and that extra guidance.”

1

Western Economic Diversification Canada is providing eligible small- and mediumsized enterprises that now qualify for Canadian Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loans with funding up to $40,000. wd-deo.gc.ca

2

The federal government has invested $2.95 million to help tech start-ups through the BC Technology Sector Resiliency Program and the Digital Economy Response program. innovatebc.ca

3

The Business Council of British Columbia’s Stronger Tomorrow, Starting Today plan outlines a potential course, with recommendations, to rebuilding B.C.’s economy. strongertomorrowbc.com

GUEST EDITOR’S PICKS

TOP APPS & PODCASTS TELEPHONE :)

A mentor of mine named Bob Chartier reminded me of the importance of this extraordinary and often overlooked app, which comes standard with Apple and Andriod. Within seconds you are connected to the voice of a person you need to talk to. Worth trying if you haven’t used it in a while — people are picking up, and there is lots to talk about.

OBSTACLE COURSE PODCAST

John and Andrew have a very kind way of helping leaders take a look at the gritty internal side of overcoming obstacles. obstaclecoursepodcast.com

NATURE OF WORK

One of the most important questions leaders ask every morning is what they will focus on.

Created by Steve Rio and his team, this program is a masterpiece and will serve as a chance to create a new blueprint for your life moving forward. natureofwork.co — Ian Chisholm

DOUGLAS 11

DEREK FORD



DESIG NER Q & A

Why is good design important?

CASE STUDY

ALGAE OF THE FUTURE

Industrial Plankton’s photobioreactors automate production, significantly reducing the repetitive and timeconsuming aspects.

Industrial Plankton’s photobioreactors make business easier for companies around the world.

BY LAURA BROUGHAM

Using traditional methods, algae production can be a difficult and error-prone process.

“We found out that everybody in aquaculture was having trouble growing algae, and they were doing it with old-school methodologies,” says Robert Roulston, CEO of Industrial Plankton. “We just automated something they were already doing.” In addition, algae is used in aquaculture, biotech and research, and traditional production methods are prone to contamination — Industrial Plankton’s photobioreactors are sealed and eliminate the risk of contamination, resulting in a more reliable crop.

Design enhances lifestyle by merging functionality and aesthetics in order to make people feel safe, comfortable and happy in the spaces they inhabit.

JEFFREY BOSDET/DOUGLAS MAGAZINE

Nhan Pham, RID Nhan Pham Interiors

Industrial Plankton designs and manufactures turnkey live plankton bioreactors for aquaculture, research and biotechnology uses.

In these days of uncertainty, a thoughtfully executed and purposefully designed environment sparks joy, creativity and most importantly, a sense of well-being for its inhabitants.

Lawrie Keogh, RID LIDA Homes Inc

VISIT US AT DESIGNCAN.CA FOR A LIST OF REGISTERED DESIGNERS ON VANCOUVER ISLAND. 12 DOUGLAS

THE TOOLS The photobioreactors are closed tanks — which eliminates the risk of contaminants — used for producing algae.

THE ADVANTAGES They reduce the amount of time and labour spent on algae production and increase biosecurity, ensuring the product doesn’t get contaminated.

THE PROCESS After adding 20 litres of algae to the photobioreactor, it scales up to 1,200 litres in a week.

The photobioreactors add nutrients to promote growth. Over the next three months, around 40 per cent is harvested per day.

THE BUYERS Industrial Plankton works with companies in 18 countries. Half of their clients are in shellfish and shrimp production; the other half makes biotech, such as nutraceuticals or drugs.

FROM CONCEPTUAL DESIGN TO FULL-SERVICE CONSTRUCTION WORK STYLE

LEADERSHIP MEETS COMMUNITY SPIRIT

How can entrepreneurs make the world a better place? Mark Crocker of Leadership Victoria shares his advice.

LOOK TO YOUR COMMUNITY

Every single day we walk past problems and see difficulties and complex issues in our society, and we say, “Someone should do something about that.” What leaders and social entrepreneurs say is, “Pick me. I’ll do it.”

They choose to take on a responsibility.

TREAT LEADERSHIP AS A TOOL

People use the word leadership for a variety of things. The extremes are command and control — like a military approach — on one end, and wide-open collaboration on the other. People tend to think of one as good and one as bad.

The reality is they’re both just tools. You need military command during a military-like event.

You need command and control during a global pandemic. If we continue it past a pandemic, that’s not necessarily beneficial.

Leadership depends on the circumstances.

BUILD AND TRUST YOUR TEAM

If we’re talking about a leadership mistake, it’s relying on yourself too much. If we’re talking about the cure, it’s building a team. Finding who should be on your team — at times figuring out who should not be on your team — clarifying your message and being very, very clear on your agenda.

Design

GOOD LEADERSHIP MAKES GOOD THINGS HAPPEN

You can make anything happen through leadership. It might not be good. Good leadership is saying, “I’m going to collect and direct the resources to make something good happen.” And I think great leadership is doing that and making sure it lasts beyond yourself.

Find community leadership courses at leadershipvictoria.ca

GUEST EDITOR’S PICK

After

DOUGLAS READS Self as Coach, Self as Leader: Developing the Best in You to Develop the Best in Others

by Pamela McLean I met Pam McLean in Santa Barbara at The Hudson Institute and was captivated by her practice of coaching. With so many leaders in Victoria using a coaching approach, this book needs to become standard issue.

— Ian Chisholm

250-880-1188 FLINTSTONESDESIGNBUILD.COM DOUGLAS 13

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Despite the busyness of downtown Victoria, the streets always look cleaner than one might expect. This is due, in part, to the Downtown Victoria Business Association’s (DVBA) Clean Team. “[Business owners] say things like ‘oh we just love those guys,’ ” says Jeff Bray, executive director of the DVBA. “They’re so responsive and they do such a good job … It’s not always pleasant work, but they’re there five days a week, rain or shine, and they make a huge difference.”

The team, which started in 2005, walks the streets of downtown picking up garbage, disposing of improperly discarded needles and cleaning graffiti — even helping clear snow.

In 2019 the team picked up 10,070 needles and cleaned 15,098 graffiti tags, which ranged from marker drawings to larger tags in inconvenient places. Bray believes the work they do enhances the esthetic of downtown and makes it a more enjoyable place to be.

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Kickstarting Work-From-Home Fitness

Getting fit while on the job may become the new normal if digital health technology company Ergonomyx has its way. The Victoria-based startup ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising $62,247 to fund its workspace fitness devices, designed to encourage a healthier lifestyle while Servicing Victoria, working at a desk. The products include a Smart SitVancouver Island, the and-Stand and a Smart Under-the-Desk Bike.

COURIER, FREIGHT &Desk LOGISTICS Lower Mainland, nationally “Finding ways to keep active while at a desk for and internationally eight hours a day is a 21st-century challenge,” says “Your business Servicing Victoria, Vancouver Island, the FREIGHT & LOGISTICS company engineer Sergio Perez Martell. “We want is our highest AL HASHAM,COURIER, PRESIDENT Lower Mainland, nationally internationally. to make itand easier for people looking to combine work MAXIMUM EXPRESS priority!”

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WHY NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO START A BUSINESS

COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

History shows us that a recession can be a breeding ground for innovation. The intensity — or lack thereof — of today’s market may be essential to the long-term growth of new businesses.

BY TOBI NIFESI

O

n May 1, the C.D. Howe Institute officially confirmed what most of us already knew — Canada is in a recession.

In the last 40 years, the Canadian economy has been plagued with four recessions.

In each of these recessions, there were dramatic changes in consumer behaviours.

In response, Canadian businesses tossed their financial forecasts in the bin and made new adjustments.

Some businesses exited the market but new businesses — like Daiya, Frozen Mountain and Slack Technologies in 2008 — entered the market and thrived.

The entry and survival rates of new businesses born during recessions are consistent with annual averages. Inflation concerns, the U.S. housing bubble and declining oil prices led to severe economic downturns in 1991, 2008 and 2014 respectively. Yet, over 70 per cent of new Canadian businesses born in those years survived at least their first two years of operation. This could

happen again in a 2020 COVID recession.

Kayla Isabelle, the executive director of Startup Canada, tells Douglas, “Entrepreneurs will be at the forefront in bridging gaps — we saw this in the 2008 recession with the inception of Slack, Square, Uber, etc. What’s the next big innovation we’ll see in 2020?”

The major concern of entrepreneurs who are considering starting businesses during a recession is the possibility that their businesses could fail as a result of poor economic conditions. The flip side of this is the idea that there actually are perfect conditions for starting a business. The reality is the best time to start a business depends more on the business’s value proposition than on economic conditions.

The capacity of a business to withstand headwinds will determine its sustained growth.

There is hardly a better time for businesses to push through any opposing forward motion than during an economic downturn. Instead of fixating on the timing, entrepreneurs

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

2012 2013

99.2

97.3

99.9

99.1

97.4

93.8

99.3

91.3

93.6

99.2

101.3

Number of New Businesses in Canada (2004-2014)

2014

SOURCE: CANADIAN NEW FIRMS: BIRTH AND SURVIVAL RATES OVER THE PERIOD 2002-2014

“Some say the world has changed, and the new normal hasn’t even settled yet.

Entrepreneurs can help to create a new normal in business.”

— DAWN MCCOOEY, MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT

and new business owners will benefit from ensuring their value proposition matches the realities of the current market.

Dawn McCooey has spent over three decades advising small business owners in Victoria and across Canada.

Having helped local businesses navigate through three recessions, McCooey believes that in 2020, entrepreneurs and new business owners are well-positioned to usher in a new reality.

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DOUGLAS 15

IN CONVERSATION WITH DR. PHILIP STEENKAMP, PRESIDENT OF ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY

LEANING IN TO THE

CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES Guest Editor Ian Chisholm sits down with Dr. Philip Steenkamp, president of Royal Roads University, to discuss empathy and courage — and the core values of leadership.

GUEST EDITOR, IAN CHISHOLM OF ROY GROUP

16 DOUGLAS

Midway through the conversation with Dr. Philip Steenkamp, the president and vice-chancellor of Royal Roads University paraphrases that inimitable leader Winston Churchill.

“Courage is the most esteemed of values because it’s the one that informs every other,” Steenkamp says.

It’s a hot afternoon in late July, and Steenkamp has joined guest editor Ian Chisholm at the Douglas office to share his insights into leadership, gleaned from a 17-year career in public service, as well as his more recent roles at several B.C. universities.

Whether named directly or not, the idea of courage — and stepping up — underlies the entire discussion.

“If you keep your head down, it can be a nice quiet life,” Steenkamp says. “But you won’t necessarily have the [same] opportunities than if you’re prepared to step in.”

His own career is defined by not keeping his head down, from taking on the difficult assignments at the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation in the 1990s to his recent vlogs about Black Lives Matter and the important distinction between statues and history.

EDITED BY ATHENA MCKENZIE

PHOTO BY JEFFREY BOSDET

Ian Chisholm (IC): What brought you to Royal Roads?

Phillip Steenkamp (PS): Well, just prior to coming to Royal Roads, I was at UBC. And I would say that the switch from UBC to Royal Roads was like moving from the Queen Mary to a speedboat.

What drew me to Royal Roads was the size. It’s a much smaller, very nimble, very flexible, very entrepreneurial university. And I really saw the opportunity to shape an institution in a way that it could really respond to the very rapidly changing society we currently live in. It was that opportunity to work in a place where you could really influence direction … There’s something so special about this place: its 10,000-plus years of Indigenous history and how important a site it was for them, then its colonial history with the Dunsmuirs and the military history. There’s a great story there.

IC: A third of your term so far has been the time of COVID. How far into the future are you looking?

PS: It’s our 25th anniversary this year as a public university. As you can imagine, we had planned a very different year. We were going to have lots of great community engagement and launch our new vision. Last year, I took the opportunity to start a vision process for the university, which asked the fundamental question: “We’re turning 25. What do we want to look like when we turn 50? In 2045, what kind of university do we want to be?”

We had a great internal discussion around that.

Then we went out externally to talk to some of our key community partners and stakeholders ... We ended up with this fantastic new vision statement: To inspire people with the courage to change the world. We heard from a lot of people, particularly our alumni, that it takes a lot of courage to put

DR. PHILIP STEENKAMP, PRESIDENT OF ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY

DOUGLAS 17

your career on hold and come back to school and upgrade your skills. So courage is really at the core of everything I think we do — and our students and alumni do. That’s the long-term vision. If I were to boil it down into its essence, I would say it’s for Royal Roads to become an engine of lifelong learning, and to fully embrace what that means. So people at any age, at any stage in their careers, can come get the skill sets they need in order to take that next step — whatever that looks like for them to become leaders in their sphere.

In his weekly video messages to the Royal Roads community, Dr. Steenkamp has addressed a range of topics, from what it means to be an anti-racist to statues and their place in recording history to the importance of poetry.

IC: You talked about the long story of Royal Roads and its location. What do you want your chapter to look like?

What would you like to be remembered for?

that within two years, I was a deputy minister.

I moved through the ranks very quickly. There PS: What I would like to be remembered for was a lot of political turmoil in the province. is inspiring and collaborative leadership. So The Nisga’a Treaty was under negotiation, having collaboratively established a new vision and it was highly contested. There was for the institution, [it has] set us on the path generally lots of anxiety in the non-Indigenous to achieve that aspirational vision. And that community about what it might mean. I just nationally and internationally, the profile of loved being in the middle of all that. I put my this university has been enhanced — that it is hand up for all the tough assignments. That’s seen as the go-to place for a number of things. how I got to where I was so quickly. The If you are a mid-career professional and you learning for me was really to lean in — difficult want to upgrade your skill set, or you want to issues, challenging issues, don’t avoid them.

Lean in and put your hand learn about leadership or up. You’ll find just a world of climate action or digital Trying to understand opportunity, if you do that. transformation, you go to what people are Royal Roads. If you’re an undergraduate student, IC: What did you learn about thinking and feeling and you’re interested dealing with conflict? has been absolutely in a challenge based PS: Listen, listen, listen to curriculum, which we’re critical in terms of people. If you think you have launching next year, that’s all the answers, you quickly determining what the institution you’ll go into trouble. I really had to actions [we’ve taken] run to, because it focuses [practice] deep listening. Even on the key challenges and how we’ve if you didn’t agree with things, society is facing. Our you had to let people speak, responded to the proposal is to do it in a because a lot of it was almost COVID-19 pandemic. therapeutic. It’s people with very innovative way, not with traditional faculties a ton of anxiety about things, and departments, but as a truly interdisciplinary needing to talk. And through that experience, and transdisciplinary approach to learning I really came to understand the importance of around the key challenges of a time, whether understanding culture. Most importantly — and that’s climate, income inequality or political this value has really come to the forefront in the polarization. Whatever those challenges are, last little while — is empathy. Really trying to we train the leaders for the future to deal understand where people are coming from, and with these issues. I want to be known as the what they are feeling and thinking. If you can president who put the university on that path. do that, even if you don’t agree, it really helps you understand their perspective and respond to them and engage in a constructive dialogue.

IC: When was your first hint that leadership was something you would spend your life doing?

IC: What leadership mistakes do you think you’ve made along the way?

PS: I would probably say it’s when I worked at the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs. So I started in that ministry in the mid 1990s as a co-op student, if you can believe that, but there was so much change and movement in the ministry, 18 DOUGLAS

PS: It’s probably not dealing with conflict as soon as I should have dealt with it or not dealing with performance. I think you almost convince yourself that things are

going to change. But if you don’t deal with underperformance or poor performance, it’s very demoralizing for an organization. So I would say those were some mistakes early on: taking too long to deal directly with conflict or to deal with subpar performance.

IC: What are some of the core values that you’ve been able to centre yourself around, regardless of the circumstances around you?

PS: I would say, although I didn’t really understand empathy early on in my early leadership positions, it was a value for me, just not articulated in that way. And as I’ve gone on in my career, the value of empathy is so apparent to me. Trying to understand what people are thinking and feeling has been absolutely critical in terms of determining what actions we've taken and how we’ve responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. So starting with empathy, and starting with a focus on people, has been a core value throughout my career. The other one is collaboration and engagement. I learned that early on in the world of Indigenous relations and treaty negotiations. Solutions emerge from having a diversity of input. The other one is creativity.

Whether it’s government ministries, Indigenous relations or the university setting and the multiple responsibilities involved, you’re often dealing with really wicked problems, and you need creative solutions. Then the last one is something I’ve looked to all my career: courage.

That’s why I’m so excited that courage is now at the core of this new Royal Roads vision. I didn’t force it in there, it actually came through organically.

IC: Why courage?

PS: Many situations require a lot of courage.

The last few months, we’ve seen so many examples. I’ve been doing weekly video messages to the community, and the first one I did was on courage. It was talking about the frontline workers, and how we all personally

needed courage to move through this — and why courage is such an important value.

IC: In those messages, you’ve been open about how listening to people with lived experience of discrimination and racism is one of the most important things white people can do to be better allies. How does an institution like Royal Roads approach the challenges of dealing with institutional racism and fostering a more diverse workplace?

PS: I’ll talk about some of what we’re doing, specifically at Royal Roads. The George Floyd killing sparked this huge movement, not only in America, but around the world. Obviously, it’s tapping into deep systemic issues. Early on, it became clear to me in conversations with the university community, particularly [with] Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, that while supportive statements were good, it was important to take action. We moved pretty quickly to build on the work we’re already doing … It really is about diversity at all levels at the university. We know we need to do a lot more work in attracting Indigenous scholars, as an example. So I’ve asked for a strategy. I want three Indigenous scholars at the University by [a set] date. Sometimes you need a blunt instrument.

IC: You mentioned Churchill earlier. I’m wondering what other leaders have inspired you, more specifically in the last six months.

PS: Jacinda Ardern. Wow. She absolutely embodies empathy. Prior to COVID, she dealt with the Christchurch shooting and the volcanic eruption. And then she had to deal with the pandemic. And she deals with it all absolutely brilliantly. It’s that empathy she has, but also a very open communication style where she trusts people, and she builds trust with people.

I’ve watched that in awe. Dr. Bonnie Henry has also been a marvel. It’s empathy. It’s treating us like adults and providing us with the information we need. Walking that balance between being cautionary but not alarmist — being calm but not complacent. She’s just able to walk that line quite brilliantly.

IC: What’s been the biggest challenge for you during the pandemic?

PS: I think the biggest challenge for me, to be honest, is to stay upbeat and positive through all of this, when you yourself are feeling uncertain and anxious about things as well.

You have to realize that in a leadership position, how you look and feel and what you say has a huge impact on your community. ■ This interview has been edited and condensed for length. Find additional questions at douglasmagazine.com DOUGLAS 19

LEADERSHIP

IN UNCERTAIN TIMES THE ONLY CERTAINTY IS UNCERTAINTY. HERE’S HOW TO BE PREPARED. As organizations try to make sense of the current environment and plan for the unknown challenges ahead, there is a critical need for leaders who understand how to navigate massive change. Douglas explores the evolving role of leadership and how it applies to your organization.

BY ALEX VAN TOL

T

he pandemic has reminded us of a few things: that stasis is never guaranteed, that we aren’t in charge of everything, and that everyone and everything is interconnected.

The only island we actually live on is this planet.

This has become clear as we begin to understand the impact of this pandemic, in terms of the vulnerabilities both to our organizations and our communities. We also have the opportunity to respond — and set a course for a more holistic and collaborative future.

Everything is easier to understand with a model. One model that forms a helpful framework for the pandemic comes from the disaster response sector, which breaks disaster into four distinct phases.

The first phase, where the shit hits the fan, is called the response phase. It’s characterized by a fast, steep spike on the graph.

“It’s what the infection curves look like,” says Kimberley Nemrava, a disaster planning expert who, after 30-plus years with the Red Cross, developed the Leading Through Crisis

program, now run through Innoweave. During the response phase, you and your team are scrambling. Adrenaline is flowing, barriers disappear, decisions are made.

“It can be exhilarating, but it’s also exhausting — and it’s highly creative,” Nemrava says.

The recovery phase involves planning for long-term consequences. In this key phase, you’re still scrambling, but you’ve got some focus and traction. You’re making decisions to stabilize, care for your team, stem your losses

PHASE ONE Response phase is when the shit hits the fan. Characterized by a fast, steep spike on the graph.

RESOURCES

PHASE TWO Recovery phase involves planning for longterm consequences. You’re still scrambling, but you’ve got some focus and traction.

PHASE THREE Preparation phase should see you planning for another possible wave of the pandemic.

SECOND WAVE   FIRST WAVE

TIME 20 DOUGLAS

PHASE FOUR Business continuity took a dive when the pandemic struck. But work during the response and recovery phases drives an upward trend once again.

‘‘ JEFFREY BOSDET/DOUGLAS MAGAZINE

BE PREPARED FOR THE SECOND WAVE ... YOU NEED TO CARVE OUT THAT TIME AS A LEADER, CARVE OUT THOSE RESOURCES ... AND IN PREPARING FOR THE NEXT WAVE, DETERMINE WHAT YOUR HIGHEST PRIORITIES ARE. PURSUE THOSE HIGHEST PRIORITIES. — KIMBERLEY NEMRAVA, PROJECT LEAD, INNOWEAVE

and help others who are worse off. You may shift your lines of business, or open new ones.

The preparation phase should see you planning for another possible wave of the pandemic. How can you be better prepared next time something like this happens? The tricky thing is, this needs to be done at the same time as the response and recovery phases, when all cylinders are already firing.

The fourth and final aspect of disaster response is business continuity. When the pandemic struck, you watched things dive. But all your work during the response and recovery phases meant that the business continuity curve began to show an upward trend once again as well — sometimes even stronger than before.

“The first three sections are all new work,” Nemrava says. In January, none of us were thinking about a disaster, let alone planning for a second wave. Similar to how mindfulness teaches that the first step in letting go of heavy emotions is to actually recognize and acknowledge them, the first step here is to get clear on what happened to your business.

“When you understand what has happened,” says Nemrava, “then you can understand, 'OK, what type of responses can I expect from my people, and how can I support them through this?'”

This period of reflection enables you to better move forward into reimagining and rebuilding.

Find Strength In Your Values It’s obvious to you that you must rebuild, but sometimes it’s tough to get everyone on board. Your people are exhausted and may still have critical

needs that weren’t addressed in the response phase.

They’re worried about that second wave: How will they be able to cope? Where will they find the energy to keep the wheels on their job, their family, their health?

This is a normal response in the wake of a crisis.

The remedy is to hold fast to your organizational principles — or revise them appropriately. The pandemic has forced us to slow down and take stock of what’s not working. Organizations are jettisoning initiatives that no longer deliver results, reorienting around their mission statements and feeling for what the world needs most.

“I don’t know any organization that’s not reexamining its values, its principles and its goals and objectives in light of [COVID] and Black Lives Matter and other social justice priorities that have really been prioritized,” Nemrava says. “As you’re going through this massive change, if you can do value- and principle-based decisions, it gives people confidence to move ahead because they’re feeling overwhelmed.”

If the virus cycles forward again through the autumn, and the economic dominoes continue to fall, the intensity of change will accelerate.

“People are going to have to be really good leaders and not compromise their values,” says Tom Benson, CEO of WildPlay Element Parks, which experienced an 85 per cent dip in business from COVID. “Stay true to taking care of people, and stay true to looking out for the environment and looking out for what would matter to your guests or your customers.”

GUEST EDITOR IAN CHISHOLM

A NOTE ON COMPASSION Terms like intentionality and self-care and self-compassion have moved out of the esoteric and into the mainstream.

As the cofounder of Roy Group, I’m aware of the fact that I am exhausted by 3:30. I’m aware of the fact that I’m not very productive on Fridays. I’m not going to beat myself up. I’m navigating a major shift. I’ve kept my team intact. I’m all in.

Concern for the well-being of its team members helped Accent Inns and Hotel Zed clear the COVID hurdle. That personto-person connection with every employee ultimately boosted engagement and commitment to the business, says CEO Mandy Farmer. In the C-suite, the companywide calls grew candid, safe and utterly transparent.

“We really encouraged the vulnerability and the realness,” says Farmer, who also notes that she’s hearing more people using the word “love” in business circles.

“It was just an opportunity to bring your true self to work," Farmer says. "And be real [admitting], ‘Man, this is hard.’ ”

DOUGLAS 21

‘‘

PULL YOUR TIME HORIZONS CLOSER. TRUST YOUR GUT AND MAKE GROUND WHEN YOU CAN. GET A CLEAR SENSE OF WHERE YOU CAN CREATE VALUE AND KEEP THAT AWARENESS CLOSE. PROTECT THAT SPARK THROUGH THE STORM, KNOWING THAT THE FIRES IT WILL START ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS MAY LOOK DIFFERENT THAN THE ONES WE STARTED BEFORE. — IAN CHISHOLM, PARTNER, ROY GROUP

22 DOUGLAS

It’s easy to compromise on the high-level things when cash flow shrinks, says Benson, but pulling back on your values will signal the death knell for your business—and your integrity.

Your People Are Your Power The second step, after reorienting around your values, is to take care of any current vulnerabilities, so people can turn their attention to the future. Shore up problematic areas. Carve out resources and time to help your people sort out the emotional upheaval.

Third, be clear — crystal clear — about which priorities are being downgraded.

Ruthlessly reassess to get things off people’s plates that are no longer priorities, and try to keep the work lean. You cannot prepare for a second wave if your team is spending energy on initiatives that no longer matter. You may need to remind people more than once to leave those old priorities behind, Nemrava advises.

Investing in your team’s well-being and professional competence will help you come back stronger. WildPlay hired a nanny to help its core team keep functioning through the lockdown. Roy Group pulled together and injected dozens of hours of leadership development into its own team. Accent Inns — which responded quickly at the beginning of the pandemic to offer accommodations to front-line workers — bucked the layoff trend by actually hiring people onto its sales team.

“In the end, I think that’s why we succeeded,” says CEO Mandy Farmer. “We were able to tell people, 'OK. Your job is secure. You do not need to worry.' ” Equally important is investing in yourself.

“You can always invest in being a better leader,” says Benson, who is just closing out five years as president of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) on Vancouver Island.

“It doesn’t matter what’s going on—it’s a capacity-building thing that we just need to do in our businesses. Read. Talk. Be curious, purposefully curious. Get involved in groups that can help to grow your leadership skills.

Help others to become leaders, and you will actually end up being a better leader.”

We’re in this for the long haul, so it’s more important than ever to keep your perspective and realize that it’s OK to just deal with things as they unfold.

“I remember climbing this peak and just givin'er to get to the summit, only to realize that that wasn’t the summit,” says Benson, recalling his early days as a climber. “It was a false summit. And then I went on to what I thought was the next summit. And even that wasn’t the summit.”

It’s a guiding parable for how to conceptualize leadership amid today’s

ever-shifting landscape, where entire dunes disappear overnight, only to re-form in new places. The thing for leaders to do now is to plan for a bunch of false summits.

“Make sure you keep enough energy and your habits are solid enough to allow you to keep going,” advises Benson, himself a disciplined follower of personal routine, “because the circumstances will keep putting summits in front of us that we just didn’t know were there — and you’re going to have to take them in and go.”

Distribute Leadership As job descriptions shift and flex, untapped competencies tend to float up to the surface— and smart leaders capitalize on this. “A company or organization is strongest when diverse and empowered leaders are given the freedom to act, lead and decide for the good of the company,” RaceRocks 3D cofounder and president Anita Pawluk writes in an email. “We have empowered and put the trust in our team leads to successfully navigate the company through this time of change.”

“Being honest and transparent is really critical. I think, too, staying super connected to your team and … being calm and collected and just touching base, being available — that’s super critical.

As leadership, too, you have to look at what’s available for opportunities that lie ahead. For every crisis, there’s an opportunity.”

— TIM CORMODE, CEO, POWER TO BE

Langford Mayor Stew Young reached out and brought together an enormous web of helpers when the pandemic got real—and he’s the first to admit he couldn’t have done it alone.

“I needed other people to help me lead,” Young says. “This is a pandemic; it’s never been done before. We didn’t know really what we were supposed to do.”

Young brought together a team of physicians, pharmacists, public servants and business leaders to help him plan and execute a region-wide response, which involved a sweeping public education campaign, regular phone check-ins for residents by city staff, physical outreach for people who needed it and seamless support for businesses, from

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supplying masks and stickers to facilitating Plexiglas installations.

“I felt a lot better as a politician that I had professionals with us working and helping in deciding what direction we take,” Young says.

When crisis hits, it’s an opportunity for others to pitch in and shoulder a different load than they are perhaps used to. When the world went into lockdown, powerhouse non-profit Power To Be moved its programs online, staying in touch with its participants through regular phone calls, instead of through in-person programming.

“We had some vehicles sitting in our parking lots, and staff that were really eager to go do stuff,” says CEO Tim Cormode. The team partnered with another not-for-profit and delivered food to vulnerable families along the coast of Vancouver Island and in the Lower Mainland. Cormode’s team shifted attention to what needed to be done, instead of who should be doing what.

“It was all hands on deck,” says Cormode.

“No job descriptions, in the sense that we’re just going to work together to get what we need done.”

Collaboration Is Our Way Forward The rhetoric for a few years now has been that we live and work in a fast-changing environment. The pandemic has acutely sharpened focus on the tools people need to cope with uncertainty, and on the importance of collaboration for us to move forward effectively. Our entire economic model is structured with competition at the centre, but the pandemic has revealed, with searing clarity, how this competition model has forced gaps and inequities between human beings.

We now find this unacceptable. “Leadership is really about us: the economy; us: the community,” says Joanna Tong, executive director of external relations at the Peter B. Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria. “There are a lot of things large 24 DOUGLAS

organizations can do more to partner with or to help with smaller businesses — whether it’s in the supply chain, whether it be sharing some skill set or expertise … When we move forward, it’s not just about a number of businesses to be reopened; it’s about the economy of greater Victoria moving forward.”

Stories of positive, effective, collaborative leadership emerge daily—and this inspiration is key in collectively moving the ball down the field. “If you’re going to really evolve in the future,” says Cormode, himself a peerless trailblazer whose gift is enabling and magnifying the work of others, “you need to figure out a way to collaborate more effectively with your peers, your staff, your stakeholders and really work together.”

That we’re all in this together is what the pandemic has finally managed to hammer into our brains. We can make the journey scary and unfair by taking advantage of each other, hoarding supplies and letting the fastest travellers run ahead. Or we can make the trip super enjoyable by sharing resources, encouraging people to take turns leading, and exchanging inspiring ideas as we explore together.

However we decide to do it, we’ve got a long trail ahead of us. “If you think the destination is two feet in front of you, you’re probably wrong—it’s probably a little more out of sight,” says Benson. “And it’s OK. We just have to be more OK with uncertainty and holding our energy for a longer period of time. Plan for the thing that’s on the other side of the summit, not for the summit. Plan on getting down the mountain.” ■

“The way to move forward is … sustainable leadership. It’s how to make your organization, your sector, your economy, the community, sustainable in the long term … A sustainable mindset is, ‘OK, you know, we may still need to reduce staff or put them on hold. But is there any chance, for example, using those staff skills and talents to benefit the not-for-profit sector?’ ” — JOANNA TONG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS, PETER B. GUSTAVSON SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

‘‘

IN MAKING SENSE OF THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT, IT’S ALSO ABOUT FIGURING OUT YOUR BIGGER PICTURE. FOR A LOT OF BUSINESSES … WHAT I SEE LACKING IN THEM IS THEY DON’T HAVE THAT BIGGER PURPOSE. FOR THEM, IT’S LIKE … ‘MY BOTTOM LINE’S DOWN AND I’M CONCERNED I’M NOT GOING TO MAKE MONEY’ … THOSE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN REALLY STRUGGLING. GIVEN WHAT’S GONE ON, THERE REALLY ARE OPPORTUNITIES, AND IT’S JUST ASKING, ‘WHAT CAN WE DO HERE? HOW CAN WE HELP?’ — MANDY FARMER, CEO, ACCENT INNS & HOTEL ZED

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EXTREME MAKEOVER

BY ANDREW FINDLAY PHOTO BY JEFFREY BOSDET

CREATING A HUB FOR

INNOVATION

The City of Victoria’s ambitious plan, Victoria 3.0, proposes an entirely new neighbourhood, the Arts and Innovation District, that will revamp a downtrodden area of downtown into an inspiring showcase of B.C. architecture and sustainable design — complete with a Marine innovation centre.

28 DOUGLAS

Mayor Lisa Helps (left) and Julie Angus, CEO of Open Ocean Robotics, at the end of Store Street, part of the proposed location for the Arts and Innovation District. An action item in the ambitious Victoria 3.0 plan is to determine the feasibility and business model for an Ocean and Marine Innovation Hub in Victoria.

DOUGLAS 29

RELIANCE PROPERTIES/PROVIDED BY THE CITY OF VICTORIA

It takes a rich imagination to envision what could be for the desolate-looking properties around Rock Bay that are dominated by sweeping expanses of asphalt.

IT’S A GUSTY AFTERNOON as Lisa Helps walks briskly along Queens Avenue. She nods politely to a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard taking a hacksaw to a shopping cart on the sidewalk in front of the Bottle Depot Return-It Centre.

He’s the only person visible on a street lined with bland single-story buildings and expanses of asphalt parking lots, most of them threequarters empty. If a tumbleweed rolled down the middle of the street, it would complete a picture that doesn’t exactly suggest vibrant urban prosperity. However, if Victoria’s mayor has her way, this underutilized and slightly downtrodden neighbourhood on the north end of downtown will be transformed into the Arts and Innovation District — a hub of creativity, ideation and entrepreneurialism. Currently, the neighbourhood is an uninspiring mix of low density, single story-dominated heavy industrial, commercial and retail development, and recently remediated industrial land owned by the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations around Rock Bay. The aspirational Arts and Innovation District would be like an extreme makeover, and it forms the cornerstone of Victoria 3.0, the city’s economic development road map for the next 20 years.

The time is right to think big about what Victoria could be. COVID-19 has revealed in a big way the city’s economic blind spots and vulnerabilities, especially the tourism sector and related businesses that are so dependent on inbound travellers.

As the pandemic sent local businesses into hibernation, the mayor and city staff wisely revisited Victoria 3.0. Helps says it would have been “tone deaf” not to pull the document from the agenda and give it a hard second look in 30 DOUGLAS

light of the local and global disruption caused by the pandemic. The updated version of the economic plan was passed by council on May 14 and is focused more crisply on building a resilient, inclusive and low-carbon economy over the next two decades. It also leans more heavily into the arts: in the updated plan Innovation District became Arts and Innovation District.

“I don’t think anyone could really have anticipated the impacts of COVID-19,” Helps says, as wind blows off the Inner Harbour and whistles along Queens Avenue. “It’s shown us how vulnerable we are, but it’s given Victoria 3.0 even more relevance and urgency.

I think people are all in. We want to focus on what we do well, and the Arts and Innovation District is a big part of the vision. We already have a strong tech sector, but right now jobs and salaries per acre around here are very low.

We want to preserve these lands as high value, employment-generating properties.”

EXPLORING POTENTIAL It doesn’t stop there. Not only will it be a place where arts and culture flourish, ideas incubate, R & D thrives and products and services are commercialized, the area is also meant to showcase construction and building design that puts climate change resiliency and sustainability at the forefront, and also models social and cultural inclusion. It’s ambitious, but if there ever is a time for hope and visionary thinking around how to revitalize roughly 10 square blocks of inner-city real estate, it’s now.

However, it takes a rich imagination to envision what could be for the desolatelooking properties around Rock Bay that are dominated by sweeping expanses of asphalt.

In the summer of 2019, Victoria’s economic development staff took a master class on modern cities with Rosemary Feenan, executive VP of research at Vancouver’s QuadReal Property Group and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Future of Cities and Urbanization Council. It was a wake-up call for Helps and her staff to carefully assess Victoria’s role in a rapidly changing global economy.

For further inspiration, Victoria looked to the German city of Dortmund, which is undertaking a similar revitalization of industrial lands. Last October Victoria hosted a German delegation, including Ullrich Sierau, Dortmund's lord mayor, to share ideas about innovation.

Helps admits these are early days but is enthusiastic about the potential. On the plus side, she says the concept has broad-based support from the marine industry sector, local First Nations, the University of Victoria and new landowners like Reliance Properties, which is closing a deal to buy nearly seven acres of industrially zoned Capital Iron land in August.

The acquisition adds to the Vancouver company’s portfolio of Victoria heritage properties, which includes 780 Blanshard, Fairfield Block, Northern Junk, the Board of Trade Building and The Janion. Jon Stovell, president and CEO of Reliance Properties, calls the Capital Iron property along Store Street, “the gateway” to the Arts and Innovation District.

“We’ve been given an invitation to take part in Victoria 3.0, and we’re enthusiastic and willing partners,” says Stovell, over the phone from Reliance’s Vancouver office. “We want the city to understand that it has to be a win-win. We want to be part of something that is visionary because it’s the right thing to do, but it must be de-risked for us. The devil will

 The Arts and Innovation District is proposed for the north end of downtown, adjacent to the harbour. The area is currently a mix of heavy industry; commercial and retail businesses, surface parking lots, recently remediated land, owned jointly by the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations; craft brewers, and artists and makers.

be in the details, and it’s going to take strong leadership. I think the mayor realizes that.”

LOOKING FOR EARLY WINS Dave Ganong, managing director at Collier's International, helped broker the Capital Iron real estate sale for the Greene family, who owned the property, and Reliance is now project manager for Matullia Holdings, a joint venture between the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Matullia currently owns three acres of former Transport Canada land and will close a deal to buy an adjacent four acres from BC Hydro next January. For the Arts and Innovation District to have any chance of coming to life, it will require buy-in from the two largest landowners in this northern corner of downtown Victoria, Reliance and Mattulia, which own nearly 15 acres between them.

“It’s in its infancy and developers can be skeptical of city councils,” says Ganong, “but

the steps Lisa Helps has taken so far to do something innovative and creative are very encouraging.”

The mayor knows it will be important to get some early wins. By the end of her term in 2022, Helps hopes to have crossed key milestones on the way to realizing the Innovation District dream. As a first step, she hopes to have city staff complete a design charette at a cost of $150,000 to taxpayers, which will aim to bring landowners and other stakeholders to the table to develop a shared vision and implementation framework. By the time Victoria residents return to the polls for the next civic election, she also wants to have all the necessary Arts and Innovation District rezoning in place. That said, the city will have to get financially creative to move the project forward. Helps estimates that it will take two years and the efforts of two full-time planners at a cost of $750,000.

“That’s not in the city budget, so we’re looking at ways to subsidize the cost, so the property owners don’t have to assume that risk,” Helps says. “I really don’t care how we fund it. I just want to get it done.”

The city’s focus on innovation is well aligned with some important thinkers on the subject.

In his final report to the province in January 2020, outgoing British Columbia innovation

commissioner Alan Winter struck a prescient, call-to-action tone.

“British Columbia cannot continue to lean on sectors reliant on tangible assets for prosperity … We must recognize that the world is being transformed by intangible assets, such as data, software, intellectual property and product development, all leading to increased competitiveness for those jurisdictions that invest,” Winter wrote in the report’s executive summary. “By building on our strengths, and investing in ideas and people, we can manoeuvre through current economic headwinds and ride global trends to a resilient, sustainable and prosperous future.”

CAPITALIZING ON STRENGTHS Long time Victoria property manager and real estate broker John Hopper believes the Arts and Innovation District is an idea whose time has come.

“Victoria’s tech sector has grown so much, and I think that will help give this project legs,” says Hopper, who along with his business partner in Geerjo Development Services, Eric Bramble, is an Arts and Innovation District champion.

Three decades ago, Hopper helped found the Rock Bay Ratepayers Association to promote the area’s revitalization. However, Hopper says

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the group felt like it was constantly swimming against the tide. Two years ago, the association disbanded because, “it didn’t seem like anything was going to change,” Hopper says.

“For so long Victoria has been so focused on housing. Lisa’s the first mayor to seriously look at capitalizing on what Victoria is good at — ­ innovation,” he says.

So far Hopper also likes what he’s hearing from city hall. The region has some natural attributes that bode well for a progressive vision. For starters, there are relatively few landowners, meaning there won’t be too many cooks in the planning kitchen, scrapping over a common vision and path forward.

“Usually when you’re talking about plans like this, you have 300 owners in the room,” Hopper says.

Secondly, he says the Rock Bay lands already have a mix of industrial and commercial zoning, which provides a strong foundation for high-value employment generation.

OCEANS FUTURE CLUSTER If the Arts and Innovation District is a Victoria 3.0 cornerstone, then the Ocean Futures Cluster is a proposal that could get this economic development initiative out of the starting gate with a bang.

The theoretical cluster will be anchored by Blue Economy principles, defined by the World Bank as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.” Kate Moran, professor of earth and ocean sciences, is president and CEO of Ocean Networks Canada, a globally recognized research institution with a staff of 160, based at the University of Victoria campus. The organization operates the NEPTUNE and VENUS cabled ocean observatories in the northeast Pacific Ocean and in the Salish Sea, and is involved in numerous other ocean monitoring and research projects.

Moran anticipates that the Ocean Futures Cluster could help bridge the gap between R & D and commercialization in Victoria’s marine sector.

She believes the city is uniquely positioned to carve out a sustainability niche that’s distinct from the St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador-based Oceans Super Cluster, which is focused more on commercial fishing, oil and gas, and other extractive industries.

“Victoria is the right place to do this,” Moran says. “People get it here.”

According to Moran, Victoria already has the solid building blocks of a cluster. Companies and organizations like Seaspan, BC Ferries and the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority are all looking to become more sustainable and are putting dollars behind green initiatives. Victoria is also home to world-leading companies in the ocean sensing sector, such as ASL

ENVISIONING WHAT COULD BE Right now, the Arts and Innovation District is long on ideas but short on details. It’s like an outline of a masterpiece in economic revitalization waiting for innovators, entrepreneurs and developers to colour between the lines. Rosemary Feenan, of QuadReal Property Group, believes Victoria has the fundamentals of “a 3.0 city,� rich in creativity and lifestyle attributes. As a provincial capital, with a well-established tech base and world- leading oceanography expertise, she says, Victoria has natural connectivity with neighbouring Pacific Northwest hubs.

“Victoria has a very strong business and community voice and a sense of what they want the city to be,� Feenan says. “They have a passionate mayor, and the Arts and Innovation District is a great start.

Our walk ends at KWENCH. Mayor Helps considers this hip coworking space on Store Street as a snapshot of what could be. It was cofounded by Tessa McLoughlin in 2017 in a building designed by the iconoclast architect Francis Rattenbury in the late 1800s. The 25,000 square foot, two-story brick building started life as a warehouse. For many years it was a decaying symbol of the industrial age. Today it’s a breezy open concept space that symbolizes nimble 21st century thinking where creatives, freelancers, artists, start-ups and remote-working corporate execs converge to work, share ideas — and socialize. Fitness classes, a podcast studio, a hair salon, a massage room and a soon-to-be opened restaurant are included with membership.

In many ways, KWENCH embodies on a small scale the globally fluent, innovative, inclusive and amenity-rich city that Victoria already is, but also could be so much better at. “Tessa is modeling what we want to do with this property,â€? Helps says. “One of the great things about being mayor is that you get to champion really good ideas.â€? â–

JEFFREY BOSDET/DOUGLAS MAGAZINE

Environmental Sciences and JASCO Applied Sciences.

Couple this private sector expertise with the platform for data gathering and number crunching provided

by Ocean Networks Canada, and Moran believe it’s a winning formula.

To jumpstart the Ocean Futures Cluster, and, in turn, the Arts and Innovation District, she says it makes sense to start with a low-hanging fruit project, such as a technology testing tank that would be shared by industry and academia. “Along with providing shared resources, a space for collaboration and educational events, the Ocean Futures Innovation Hub is an accelerator and incubator, offering critical business resources and mentorship needed for early-stage companies to grow,� says Julie Angus, CEO of Open Ocean Robotics.

According to Kate Moran, president and CEO of Ocean Networks Canada, Victoria already has the solid building blocks of a cluster, with companies and organizations like Seaspan, BC Ferries and the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority.

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What the heck happened?

When cannabis was legalized, B.C. was poised to profit big time from this new gold rush. Almost two years later, approvals have been slow, supply short, customers disappointed and confusion high.

Douglas digs in to find out what’s really going on.

BY JODY PATERSON

N

o province seemed better prepared than B.C. to step effortlessly into that bright new future when cannabis was legalized. No region was better positioned to lead the pack than Greater Victoria, where 43 vibrant and diverse dispensaries had sold B.C. bud, edibles and locally produced tinctures and oils for years.

But that wasn’t how things turned out. Two years after legalization, long-standing retailers with thriving operations and multiple storefronts have yet to return — some caught in the slow transition to legality, others raided and fined heavily by B.C.’s new Community Safety Unit.

Legal retailers in the region are scarce. Only 17 have made it through a process snarled by onerous costs and three levels of government approvals. Compassion clubs that led the 20-year fight

34 DOUGLAS

to legalize cannabis for medical use were raided and forced to close.

Supply, quality and variety of cannabis products have all taken a hit, even while prices have increased. The black market carries on.

“For B.C., it was two steps back,” says Luke Biles, Victoria-based senior manager with MNP, a business consulting firm and leader of the company’s cannabis services line for Vancouver Island. “There was no transition structure in place. Those in what we’re calling the ‘legacy’ cannabis industry, built their livelihoods around cannabis, and, all of a sudden, it was gone. They should have been the first in line for licences, but they didn’t get a leg up. Instead they got raided, with significant fines.”

Victoria City Councillor Ben Isitt says lessons learned over decades of building a thriving and homegrown wine, beer and liquor industry in B.C. were ignored when cannabis was

legalized. The new regulations rolled right over top of thousands of veteran growers, retailers, distributors and manufacturers, while publicly held companies with deep pockets moved in.

“B.C. has a very vibrant craft cannabis industry.

In terms of supplying what users are looking for, growers were providing that very well,” says Isitt.

“But the model Canada pursued was agri-business — the opposite direction that we’ve seen beer go. There’s a very large demand for smaller craft producers of cannabis, but governments didn’t carve out a space for them. They failed to provide an opportunity for them to transition.”

Fighting the Stigma Blame it on misplaced fear, says Andrew McLachlan. The Victoria tech entrepreneur and founder of Canadian Micro Cannabis Consulting grew up on a cannabis farm in Saskatchewan, and is now working with Community Futures Central Kootenays to transition some of that region’s 2,000 legacy cultivators into the legal system.

“I try to look at the positives. The regulations we have now were developed by people who are ignorant of cannabis,” says McLachlan. “The people who regulated it are people who have been taught that it’s evil and bad, and they have reacted out of fear and ignorance. That’s the consequence of integrating this into all of our communities in a negative way.”

Responding to written questions from Douglas, the provincial government said “protecting health and safety” were paramount during the transition.

“While many people would have liked to see the province move faster on the retail front, we were unwilling to compromise our commitments to protecting health and safety,” wrote a media relations spokesperson with the Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General.

“Part of that includes fit and proper assessments—a key tool in keeping criminal activity out of a legitimate and vibrant cannabis retail industry, which is in everyone’s best interest,

as well as ensuring that Indigenous nations and local governments have a say in whether a cannabis retailer will be welcome in their community.”

Happily, most believe better days are coming.

The regulatory flaws are so obvious that some are already being changed, notes Biles. B.C.’s Premier John Horgan has spoken supportively about helping the craft cannabis industry. The corporations dominating now will not necessarily be the ones leading the industry in five years, says McLachlan.

“It’s quite a mess right now, but I’m excited about it, because there are solutions out there,” he says. “We want to be empowering the craft consumers to rise up. ‘B.C. bud’ is internationally famous, and one of the first things anyone mentions about B.C., in my experience. Two of the largest market data research and investment firms in the cannabis industry are estimating that recreational cannabis will be an almost $5 billion industry in Canada within five years.”

17 have made it through a process snarled by onerous costs, many regulations, and three levels of government approvals.

Private outlets pay 15 per cent over wholesale prices to buy cannabis from the LDB, which rankles retailers competing with government stores in their communities.

$ Some argue the ‘legacy’ cannabis industry should have been first in line for licences.

Instead, many were raided and face significant fines.

Only Big Business Need Apply Before legalization, B.C.’s cannabis industry was an innovative and integrated network of small businesses that grew, manufactured, distributed and sold products in diverse ways. The 2013 legalization of medical cannabis allowed growers to legally cultivate on behalf of people with medical exemptions, and some quietly cultivated for an illegal recreational market as well. The retail scene grew bolder in cities like Victoria as police put their time towards more pressing issues.

Those were good days, says Ted Smith, founder of Canada’s oldest compassion club. A veteran of the medical cannabis struggle, Smith opened his Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club on Johnson Street in 1996. The club survives, but the storefront was raided last fall and $25,000 worth of products seized, and raided again in July. Its fate is now in the hands of the federal government. “Every day is a little miracle,” says Smith.

17 15% 50+

Of the 43 dispensaries in Greater Victoria, just

Supply, quality and variety of cannabis products have taken a hit, even while prices have increased. The black market carries on.

While the majority of customers shopping at legal dispensaries are age 50 and up, the shops must not show products to shield young people from cannabis.

Many B.C. retailers have to sell cannabis that was grown on the other side of the country.

First Nation communities were left out of the conversation when Canada was making its regulations, so now some bands are doing their own thing.

$5 billion Two of the largest market data research and investment firms in the cannabis industry are estimating that recreational cannabis will be an almost $5 billion industry in Canada within five years.”

Provincial governments regulate recreational cannabis while the federal government regulates medical cannabis, now available only by mail-order.

DOUGLAS 35

JEFFREY BOSDET/DOUGLAS MAGAZINE

The Original FARM closed its locations for the eight months it took to transition from a legacy to a legal market. The cannabis retailer now has three open locations (including Hillside, pictured here) with a fourth to open this year in Duncan.

He thinks Health Canada wanted big corporations to take the market so that there would be fewer licences to oversee.

Instead, “legalization crippled the legacy market and diverted the sales of 43 dispensaries into the black market.”

The new regulations have siloed every aspect of the industry. Separate licensing processes for cultivating, processing and selling have destroyed the vertical integration that once existed at shops like Smith’s, where medical-grade edibles are made on site. Provincial governments regulate recreational cannabis while the federal government regulates medical cannabis, now available only by mail order.

Dreams of farm-gate cannabis are distant at the moment. Farmers face three distinct regulatory processes to grow, package and sell cannabis, and nobody can sell their own products directly anyway. “We know that there is interest in farm-to-gate sales, and this is one of the options we are considering to support the development of a strong and sustainable cannabis production industry throughout B.C.,” the provincial government wrote in response to Douglas's question on the topic.

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Back to B.C. Bud The Liquor Distribution Branch is now the sole distributor of legal recreational cannabis in B.C. That means Island-grown cannabis has to be shipped to LDB outlets in Vancouver before being shipped back to retail outlets on the Island, and has allowed an influx of cannabis from elsewhere into what was once a resolutely homegrown market.

“That affects the carbon footprint of the industry and the quality of product,” says Gavin Rose, senior cannabis consultant for the local retailer The Original FARM. That company made the painful decision to close for the eight months that it took to transition from a legacy to a legal market. (And it closed again in the initial stages of the coronavirus pandemic, but just long enough to reopen with Plexiglas barriers and social-distancing practices in place.)

“The regulations we have now were developed by people who are ignorant of cannabis. The people who regulated it are people who have been taught that it’s evil and bad, and they have reacted out of fear and ignorance. That’s the consequence of integrating this into all of our communities in a negative way.”

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— ANDREW MCLACHLAN, CANADIAN MICRO CANNABIS CONSULTING

“We’re now seeing cannabis being sold here that was grown in millions of square feet on the other side of Canada, and warehoused until it got to us. It’s not like the old days where the local farmer brought you in a fresh pound,” adds Rose. “I’m optimistic about the future of the industry, but in B.C. we’ve taken a large leap backwards into legalization. There’s going to have to be a lot of changes in policy.”

While the keys to the cannabis kingdom went to big corporations, Biles notes that many of them are now struggling to meet business goals. They and their investors “bought into the hype” and jumped into a market they didn’t understand. Governments didn’t understand it either, he adds, pointing to a regulatory framework that has reduced products, hurt quality and led to a rise in prices – all of which maintained the black market.

“October 17, 2018 came, and everyone was expecting to be earning revenues,” says Biles.

“But the provinces were waiting for guidance from Health Canada, and the municipalities waited for the provinces. Nobody was ready.

DOUGLAS 37

These big companies have already laid off more than 1,000 workers just since legalization.”

Like alcohol, recreational cannabis is sold at both public and private outlets in B.C., though just 16 of B.C.’s 271 licenced outlets are publicly owned. Private outlets pay 15 per cent over wholesale prices to buy cannabis from the LDB, which rankles retailers competing with government stores in their communities.

Ted Smith thinks the industry should have been decriminalized for a few years first. People would have had time to get used to a different way of doing things and gradually ease into legalization “with no harm done.” Too late now.

McLachlan predicts more failures among the major cannabis companies as they learn the hard lessons of a business they aren’t familiar with.

“You’ve got supply chain experts in these companies who are coming from places like The Bay and thinking they can operate the same way for an agricultural product,” he says. “I think there will be lots of failures. Look at the tech industry for examples of that. It wasn’t Google and Facebook who were breaking ground in that industry in the early days.”

Left Out of the Conversation In the absence of clarity on whether Canada’s regulations apply on Indigenous lands, First

Nations are exploring opportunities. Smith is working with Cowichan Tribes to build a commercial cannabis kitchen on Cowichan lands to be able to continue providing medical users with specialized local products. Other bands are having those same conversations with cannabis entrepreneurs.

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The Malahat Nation opened an Indigenous Bloom cannabis dispensary this spring.

Indigenous Bloom partners with First Nations for the production and dispensing of medicinal hemp and cannabis products.

The retail staff across its locations is comprised of 63 per cent Indigenous employees.

“Many people felt First Nations were left out of the conversation when Canada was making its regulations, so now they are doing their own thing,” says Biles. “It’s a good opportunity to see the industry develop on those lands.”

Malahat Nation is the latest Indigenous tribe to venture into the cannabis industry, opening an Indigenous Bloom Corp. outlet this April.

Indigenous Bloom also has a dispensary at the Tseycum First Nation in North Saanich, as well as locations on the mainland in White Rock, Penticton, Williams Lake, Osoyoos and Oliver.

The Banking Issue Financial institutions are still giving the industry the cold shoulder, with banks and many credit unions refusing to even allow the opening of an account. Industry observers suspect it’s because banks are wary of impacting any U.S. business, as cannabis is legal in many states but illegal nationally.

“The banking issue is huge,” says Biles.

“The U.S. is working on the SAFE Banking Act for states where cannabis is legal. If that goes through, that opens up the possibility to make change here.”

Meanwhile, somebody’s going to have to figure out legal spaces where cannabis can be consumed, says Ben Isitt. The provincial government spokesperson notes that “it is a complex public policy issue,” but could be considered down the line.

“The lack of opportunity to consume in a social setting is a real problem,” says Isitt. “It’s prohibited in parks and public squares, and there’s no licensing for indoor consumption rooms. People in apartments and strata properties are facing really tight restrictions.

There are obvious challenges, like air quality and worker health, to consider, but I think they’re surmountable.”

Dustin Ereiser, who owns and operates Buds Cannabis in Saanichton with his wife Megan, hopes for a loosening of advertising restrictions. Retailers can advertise only inside bars, and signage can’t be any bigger than 30by-30 centimetres.

Initial regulations required all retail outlets to have window coverings, blocking any view of the inside of a store. That has now changed to a less stringent requirement of not having products visible. Future retailers will welcome that, but those who paid thousands of dollars to obscure their windows just months ago aren’t quite so cheery about the reversal.

Obscuring windows to shield young people from cannabis is ironic given that the majority of customers shopping at legal dispensaries are age 50 and up, says Ereiser. “The kids are all still buying black market from their buddies.

It’s the professionals, the blue collars, the wellto-do who are buying legal cannabis.”

But things will settle down and loosen up soon enough, he predicts: “I liken it to liquor after Prohibition ended. I imagine when they first came out with 12 bottles in a box, people were appalled. And then the next generation comes along and knows no difference.”

McLachlan — whose cannabis app consolidates all the forms and requirements from every level of government to simplify the application process — says the immediate goal ought to be transitioning into the new system the 5,800 B.C. growers sanctioned by Health Canada under the old guidelines. “Even if you look at 10 per cent being able to transition,

that’s 500 producers. That will stimulate the economy.”

Government does acknowledge the unintended consequences of legalization, says Biles. He expects fast change for some of the most pressing issues and an ultimately bright future for the industry.

“Yes, everyone has a bit of a struggle right now, but there are great people in this industry,” says Biles. “Put people from the cannabis industry together, and it’s like fireworks go off. Folks are happy to share, create new partnerships, find new ways to do business.

We’re going to get there.” ■

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DOUGLAS 39

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

INTEL

DIVERSITY

BY RUTH MOJEED

Together, Toward a More Inclusive Future How leaders can nurture the mindset for an inclusive workplace.

Q

uite often, we think of privilege as the indisputable lot of the few — those who have opportunities not available to others of a different group or socio-economic class. While this is true, there are also the endless layers of intersecting challenges faced by many in the workplace — typically around issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, age or other socio-cultural norms that perpetuate systemic inequalities. These are often reinforced by stereotypes and biases that support the experiences and world views of a powerful minority, and they serve as a deterrent to true inclusion in the workplace.

The idea of inclusion is to enable, affirm and empower experiences and perspectives that may have been unacknowledged or unappreciated in any context, including the workplace. Employers with rigid interpretations of relevant work experience tend to miss out on the best opportunities for re-invention and how to uniquely leverage for creativity. With the world becoming even closer in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, employers and business leaders have an opportunity to seek out the best and brightest talents whose experiences and skills may not readily translate into Canadian experience.

The Canadian-experience clause has become an impediment to many newcomers to Canada who, without the proper translation of their experiences to fit within a Canadian context are denied opportunities for selfactualization and the ability to make meaningful contributions. As many newcomers — immigrants, refugees and international students — try to navigate the difficult challenges and complexities of changes in culture, environment and workplace expectations, there should also be an increased onus on employers to make the workplace ready and accepting to the new and the unfamiliar.

REPRESENTATION IN THE CORPORATE PIPELINE BY GENDER AND RACE % OF EMPLOYEES BY LEVEL IN 2019

■ WHITE MALE

ENTRY LEVEL MANAGER SR. MANAGER/ DIRECTOR VP SVP C-SUITE

■ MEN OF COLOUR

35%

■ WHITE FEMALE

16%

45%

30% 17%

51%

■ WOMEN OF COLOUR

18% 27%

14%

57%

26%

10% 68%

10%

SOURCE: MCKINSEY & COMPANY WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE REPORT 2019

40 DOUGLAS

9%

24%

12%

64%

12%

21% 18%

7% 5% 4%

Organizational readiness and cultural wellbeing can be seen through the predominant culture, practices, policies and power dynamics within an organization. Being a culturally ready or fit workplace requires long-term commitment and efforts to treat employment as a two-way street, with mutual respect, ongoing dialogue and openness on the parts of both employers and employees.

MAKE A LONG-TERM COMMITMENT Now more than ever, the need for racebased data and tracking the experiences of particularly impacted groups has become a matter of urgency. We now need to ask the necessary questions to ascertain who has been laid off and why. Who are the people most susceptible to the lasting impacts of the pandemic, with regard to job losses and employability — as well as growing disparities in society? How do we work with other stakeholders — policy-makers, academia, talent recruitment agents within business and civil society — to move the dial on inequities that may have been further exacerbated by the pandemic?

For Black Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC) communities, there are often multiple layers of challenges that require an intersectional approach to long-standing issues of inequality. Even when there are recorded cases of employment, it is very normal that there are still disparities in the nature of jobs, working conditions and pay equity. Not every job is a good job. With limited options and

lack of access to the necessary tools for pursuing prospects and securing meaningful employment, many people of colour fall to the bottom end of the employability spectrum — for reasons such as the “Canadian experience” factor, described earlier.

Profiling and targeted employability can serve both as an advantage and a deterrent to employment equity. When the right skills are overlooked because of unspoken, unacknowledged or unconscious biases, everyone suffers. Real, lasting change requires

With limited options and lack of access to the necessary tools for pursuing prospects and securing meaningful employment, many people of colour fall to the bottom end of the employability spectrum.

ENTREPRENEUR

a shift in perception, perceptiveness and interpretation of talents and skills. That shift takes effort and a long-term commitment to change. As well, it requires a commitment to collaborate and to discover different ways of engagement, including seeking out talent in unusual or non-traditional places and on-going changes to workplace policies and employment practices.

The pressure to fit within existing organizational frameworks and workplace cultures does a lot to disadvantage organizations from the benefits of a truly inclusive workplace. A diverse organization does not equal an inclusive organization. And

true inclusion leads to equitable opportunities both for the organization and the individuals within it.

A REWARDING PROCESS While the impacts of an organization’s efforts towards addressing systemic inequalities may be largely unseen in the early stages, the process of change, in itself, can be most rewarding. The beauty of change is in the process behind it. A journey which can be complicated, yet rewarding on many levels.

As diverse world views and talents come together, a tapestry emerges, woven out of the complexity of unique perspectives, voices and lived experiences.

The responsibility for a shared inclusive future for all requires a collective responsibility to change — lasting, impactful and often uncomfortable. The uncomfortable shift from what is normal and general standards of acceptability begins with a process of self-reflection and a deep sense of acknowledgement. An inclusive workplace is one where acceptability is chief; differences are celebrated and opportunities are created to discover, nurture and rediscover new ways of being, acting and doing. This is a shared responsibility for us all. ■

Ruth Mojeed is the founder and CEO of The Inclusion Project. She brings extensive lived experience and grounded expertise to her work in equity, diversity and inclusion across public and private sectors. She is a director with the board of the Canadian International Council and manager of the Victoria Forum.

BY JIM HAYHURST

Is This Your Leadership Moment?

The COVID crisis has sparked unending demand for more leadership. But, not everyone should be so quick to take up the baton without some deep selfreflection — and the right support.

I

n the months since the pandemic upended every organization I know, I have heard two phrases more often than any other when I’ve asked people how they were doing.

The first was: “I was built for this.” Not said with false bravado or unearned optimism. They were genuinely ready to lean in, do whatever it took.

The second was: “I’m not sure I can do this.”

Not said in defeat or shame, but with open eyes and refreshing self-awareness.

Both phrases were uttered in complete honesty. And both showed up early in conversations as we all level-set against our new reality. Then, about four months in, something happened. People who were “built

for this” started to tire. And people who “weren’t sure” started to find their groove.

Time, once again, proved to be the great leadership leveler. This sprint turned into a marathon – and is now more akin to a very Canadian portage of indefinite length and everincreasing pack load, causing us all to adjust our pace and expectations. The ability of people and organizations to self-regulate — up or down – has been heartening to see throughout our community.

There have also been casualties. And I don’t simply mean businesses going under. I mean the collateral damage of heightened leadership expectations, with unbearable pressure, without a timeline, and with an unseen virus swirling around us.

DOUGLAS 41

The pervasive peer pressure of sharing our COVID triumphs, pivots and new plans on social media only added to the burden, like some perverse realtime version of the old phrase, “What did YOU do in the war, Daddy?”

People are being asked (even forced and expected) to step into leadership roles without any preparation. Normal rules of engagement — training, communication, planning — are being cast aside, deemed a luxury in a time of crisis.

Honest conversations about one’s own readiness and willingness (or lack thereof) to step up are being viewed as wholly optional, if not outright counterproductive, in such existential times.

To be sure, the crisis required immediate, sustained action — and still does. Thankfully, there are many examples of those who were ready to respond, not just react. I think of Dr. Bonnie Henry, about whom I have written before. The South Island Prosperity Partnership’s rapid response with their deeply impressive Rising Economy Taskforce. The City of Victoria’s updated economic action plan – Recovery, Reinvention, Resilience. I’ve watched with pride as foundations and donors liberated their networks (and grant protocols) to get resources to those in immediate need through efforts like our own Rapid Relief Fund, administered by the Victoria Foundation.

In each case, decisive and impactful action didn’t just appear overnight. Their leadership equity – their ways of leading and collaborating — had been banked for some time. They were actually “built for this.”

Where people and organizations struggled was when there was no plan, no readiness, no muscle

memory, no prescribed way of leading. I saw this not only in newer startups, but groups with long-standing legacies. Companies were asking employees – even founders were asking themselves – to take on more without knowing where it would take them or even how to do it.

The pervasive peer pressure of sharing our COVID triumphs, pivots and new plans on social media only added to the burden, like some perverse real-time version of the old phrase, “What did YOU do in the war, Daddy?”

If ever there was a case being made for proactive leadership development, now is the time. Yet the reality is, too many organizations are still in crisis mode. So, let’s keep it simple.

■ If you can’t specifically name your method of leadership development, either personally or organizationally – right now – go get help. Find a coach, leadership development consultant or ask your industry association for free training. This crisis isn’t over – and the next one won’t wait. Yes, you might just be trying to keep the lights on. But, I promise you, there won’t be a better time to start (and you’ll forget when the good times roll again).

■ Before you tap someone for an expanded leadership role or new responsibilities (including yourself!) work through the Three C’s (from the very least you can do to the very most):

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COMMUNICATE Simply have the conversation about what you need and why.

Perhaps the decision has already been made, but make sure it’s clear.

CONSULT Engage those you are tapping in a robust discussion, and come to an agreement. If you are asking yourself to take on new responsibilities in your organization, seek out a trusted, unbiased party to stress test your plan. (Better yet, ask your advisory board.)

COLLABORATE What does this role look like and what problem is it solving? Is there an alternative — possibly better — approach to the leadership gap or opportunity you are facing? Ask your team – not just the parties involved – to co-create, to elicit new perspectives and earn buy-in.

■ Finally, ask yourself where you sit on the readiness spectrum. At one end is: “I was built for this.” On the other: “I’m not sure I’m ready.”

Check in regularly and honestly with yourself.

Things change quickly. Time passes slowly.

And vice versa. It’s OK to adjust your pace and expectations.

It has long been said that our region is a bubble; that we are far less affected by macro influences like global financial crises, national housing markets and external socio-political events. The great equalizer named COVID-19 has reinforced for us all that, while this may still be true to some extent, it is not by chance or because of simple geographic fortune.

Victoria and Vancouver Island are home to individuals and organizations who have demonstrated that leadership, at all levels, requires investment, proactive planning and brutal honesty about where and how we can contribute to the best of our abilities to continue to protect this most remarkable community.

It all starts with leadership — and you get to define it. ■

Jim Hayhurst is a trusted advisor to purposedriven organizations and leaders. He is currently active in six companies and social impact projects that elevate Victoria’s reputation as a hub of innovation, collaboration and big thinking.

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MINDSET

BY ERIN SKILLEN

The Case for Cancelling Toxic Leadership How do you shift to a more humanistic leadership style?

F

ear-based leadership is easily identified by its dehumanizing tactics: bullying, shaming, yelling, fear-mongering and more. What’s a lot less obvious is the harm it causes.

“I became very stressed and paranoid to the point that I would fall asleep, stressing about work, and wake up stressing about work,” said one executive who previously worked under a toxic leader in the financial sector. “There were moments where I wanted to vomit, I was so scared,” said another employee in a creative industry. “We always felt trapped and in danger.”

“People will just grind through employees to get what they want,” says Jason Dorland, an Olympian, author and partner at Your Mindset: Coaching and Consulting in Victoria. As an athlete, he directly experienced fear-based leadership and its consequences, but also recognizes how it can appear to work for some leaders.

“They think it’s a strategy that will get them what they want,” he says. “And on some level it works. But it doesn’t work as well as it could.

When you embrace that type of leadership, it’s really expensive — high turnover with employees underperforming. They have one eye on their job and one eye on the leader.”

This creates a toxic environment where the team breaks down into a collection of distrustful people focused on saving themselves.

The collateral damage extends well beyond the employees. Workplace vitriol creeps into the employees’ personal lives, putting partners, children, family and friends squarely in the crosshairs of misplaced frustration, anger, sadness and anxiety. Physical and mental health can also be negatively affected, eroding the employee’s ability to function effectively over time.

THE BENEFITS OF HUMANISTIC LEADERSHIP Those are the human-focused consequences, which, frankly, many toxic leaders may not care about. But it’s not just the employees who suffer.

Researcher and author Brené Brown discusses this in her book Dare to Lead: “When our

According to the research paper The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments by Padilla et al. there are six characteristics of a toxic leader, which are tolerated in environments that are conducive to these behaviours.

These environments recruit susceptible followers, who either collude or conform to this environment. This is known as the Toxic Triangle.

SUSCEPTIBLE FOLLOWERS CONFORMERS

COLLUDERS

• UNMET NEEDS • AMBITION • LOW CORE SELF-EVALUATIONS • SIMILAR WORLD VIEW • BAD VALUES • LOW MATURITY

SOURCE: ADAPTED FROM "THE TOXIC TRIANGLE: DESTRUCTIVE LEADERS, SUSCEPTIBLE FOLLOWERS, AND CONDUCIVE ENVIRONMENTS." PADILLA ET AL.

44 DOUGLAS

organization rewards armoring behaviors like blaming, shaming, cynicism, perfectionism, and emotional stoicism, we can’t expect innovative work.” That lack of innovation is key. If team members are scared of being ridiculed or shamed, they’ll keep their ideas – especially risky ones that could be the breakthrough a company needs – safely in their minds away from harm.

In The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups author Daniel Coyle references a Harvard study of over 200 companies, which found that a “strong culture increases net income 756 per cent over 11 years.” This is just some of the information discovered through increasing research, studying the results of more holistic, humanistic leadership styles and their resulting corporate cultures.

If the carrot of a more innovative culture and growing revenues aren’t enough incentive, COVID is now forcing organizations to consider their culture. The pandemic has flipped — and will likely continue to flip — employees’ lives upside down. They’re operating at a higher baseline stress and are distracted by the myriad of challenges the pandemic is creating.

This struggle with uncertainty is manifesting in increased levels of anxiety, depression, divorce and substance abuse. With the workforce in this fragile condition, Jason Dorland believes that fear-based leadership will find itself falling short.

“You either create a culture that adapts to the

DESTRUCTIVE LEADERS • CHARISMA • PERSONALIZED POWER • NARCISSISM • NEGATIVE LIFE THEMES • IDEOLOGY OF HATE

CONDUCIVE ENVIRONMENTS • INSTABILITY • PERCEIVED THREAT • CULTURAL VALUES • LACK OF CHECKS AND BALANCES AND INEFFECTIVE INSTITUTIONS

“There were moments where I wanted to vomit, I was so scared. We always felt trapped and in danger.” challenges — the world that we’re going through — or you’re going to fail,” he says.

At the same time, he’s well aware that any changes won’t be immediate.

“You have to invite people to change because none of us like to be told what to do. And it’s not like learning a new skill. You don’t come and take notes and walk out a different person.

It takes time, patience, persistence and a willingness and a wanting to change. It’s slow.”

CREATING A SAFE SPACE So how do you shift to a more humanistic leadership style? You start by creating psychological safety. Shaming, humiliation and yelling are replaced by empathy, vulnerability and listening. Dare to Lead suggests that to “scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded.”

It needs to be a safe space where your team feels connected to the company and to one another.

To clarify, this doesn’t mean that everyone is happy and getting along all the time. Far from it.

Instead, the team has a shared goal and each team member understands their role in achieving that goal without having to worry about being attacked or undermined. Disagreements take place, but they occur in a culture based on respect, trust and collaboration. “It’s your best competitive strategy,” says Dorland. “When people feel seen, when they feel they are valued, that’s a healthy place. And then they perform the best for the longest.”

Toxic, fear-based leadership styles probably won’t disappear. They play a significant role in our capitalist system where the shortest path to the greatest profit is often the priority, at any cost. But as our workforce evolves post-COVID, as the evidence continues to accumulate in favour of more empathic leadership, the tide will turn. If you’re seeking to be innovative and proactive in a challenging time, tossing toxic leadership is a compelling place to start. ■ Erin Skillen is a writer, Creative + Ops at Amira Health, harried co-parent of two kids and six chickens, and co-host and producer of the new Demarried Life podcast.

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CHRIS MOCK CORMORANT

LAST PAGE

The new ventilators, a collaboration between Cerebra Health and Victoria-based StarFish Medical, are tested at ViVitro Labs by Nick Oldford (left) and Courtney Rich (centre) and John Walmsley, StarFish Medical’s VP of Strategic Relationships (right).

ESSENTIAL INNOVATION INVENTION — AND REINVENTION — IS A MATTER OF COURSE FOR VICTORIABASED STARFISH MEDICAL. Publicly tapped by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to develop ventilator technology for Canada in April of 2020, StarFish Medical, with founder and CEO Scott Phillips at its helm, turned what is usually a two-to-three years-long process into a three-month sprint towards a technologically perfect ventilator — a timeline Phillips refers to as “outrageous.”

46 DOUGLAS

BY SUSAN HOLLIS

Originally queried to assess their level of interest in ventilator tech by Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGEN), an Ontario-based non-profit that matches manufacturers with tech developers, StarFish Medical went on to collaborate on the Winnipeg Ventilator with Cerebra Health, who are based in Manitoba. Using the Winnipeg Ventilator’s original plans, the collaborators redesigned every component, ending up with a bar-fridge-sized ventilator that will be used to meet the government’s goal of a 7,500 cache for future contingencies. While waiting for the

project’s final approval by Health Canada’s regulatory body, Phillips is focusing on what the added media exposure has brought to the table.

“We’ve seen a substantial uptick of engagement on our websites, and across our core expertise, so really the benefit is not so much directly in ventilators, although there probably will be some,” says Phillips, adding that June was a record month for signing new clients. “There’s a big carry-over into our core business of medical device innovation.”

Due to the complexities around medical device design and development, StarFish Medical

staff has historically always flown to meet potential clients around the world. Now Phillips says they have brokered a number of new contracts via Zoom, and are landing clients in cities like Boston and San Francisco, where their main competitors are based.

“This is the first time in our history that we’ve signed brand-new client contracts with companies we’ve never met face to face before, so I think COVID is changing the buying environment as well,” says Phillips.

“For Victoria companies, that bodes quite well because we’re all far away from our markets.”

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