CHIEFSUPERINTENDENT
TheBoardofTrusteesinvitesapplicationsforthepositionof
ChiefSuperintendent/CEOoftheCalgaryRomanCatholic
SeparateSchoolDivision.
CalgaryCatholicSchoolDivision,anAlbertaTOP70Employer,isthe
largestCatholicschooldivisioninAlberta,educating58,000students
in116schools,withabudgetofover$630million.
Thesuccessfulcandidatewillbeanactive,practicingCatholicand
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FormoreinformationvisittheDivisionwebsite:www.ccsd.ab.ca
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[email protected]
November1,2019.B8 CAREERS O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| SATURDAY,OCTOBER19,2019
‘C
ulture eats strategy for
breakfast.” It’s a provoca-
tive thought, but for
many people, unfortunately, also
useless because it’s not easy to
act on. Strategy is difficult, but
we have well-worn steps for de-
vising one. Culture? We’re not
sure how to shape it.
That makes venture capitalist
Ben Horowitz’s new bookWhat
YouDoIsWhoYouAreparticular-
ly helpful. It offers steps for cre-
ating culture, taken not just from
his vast business knowledge, but
from his study of four historical
non-business exemplars.
He frames his findings around
lessons from Toussaint L’Ouver-
ture, who led a slave revolt that
resulted in the founding of Haiti;
the bushido warrior code of the
Japanese samurai; Genghis
Khan, who built the world’s
largest empire around the no-
tion of an inclusive meritocracy
open to the people he conquer-
ed; and Shaka Senghor, who af-
ter being sentenced to 19 years in
a Michigan prison for murder,
made his prison group the tight-
est, most ferocious in the yard
and then decided to change him-
self and them into a more hu-
mane alternative.
Mr. Horowitz’s prime guide-
line is taken from the slave re-
volt: Create shocking rules. “The
more counterintuitive the lead-
er’s decision, the stronger the
impact on the culture,” he says.
Once the black rebels won con-
trol of the island, revenge was in
the air. It would have been easy
to assent and allow the planta-
tion owners to be shot. But L’Ou-
verture believed that revenge
would destroy rather than ele-
vate the culture he sought. He
also declared that “the guarantee
of the liberty of the blacks is the
prosperity of agriculture.” So the
plantation owners would not on-
ly live, but keep their land, al-
though they were ordered to pay
labourers one-fourth the profits
and live on their land so they
would be directly accountable.
To create shocking rules, Mr.
Horowitz says:
It must be memorable. If
people forget the rule, they for-
get the culture.
It must raise the question
“why?” The rule should be so un-
usual – bizarre even – that every-
one is forced to ask, “Are you se-
rious?” That grabs attention – it
can’t be ignored.
The cultural impact should
be straightforward. Nothing
fuzzy. You are answering the
“why?” clearly.
People must encounter the
rule almost daily. If it applies on-
ly once a year, no matter how
startling the rule, it won’t be
memorable. It will be irrelevant.
He points to Amazon.com
Inc., in its early days, emphasiz-
ing its rule on frugality by buying
cheap doors from the Home De-
pot Inc. and nailing legs to them
to create desks for new employ-
ees. When one recruit asked the
desired “why?” as the company’s
market capitalization swelled,
the answer was the company
looked for every opportunity to
save money so it could deliver
the best prices at the lowest cost.
(With the culture set, he says the
company no longer creates desks
out of doors, but has found even
cheaper alternatives.)
The media went wild with
“whys?” when New York Giants
football coach Tom Coughlin de-
clared that if his players were on
time for a meeting, they were
late. Certainly counterintuitive.
They were expected to be five
minutes early. It was a memora-
ble message about the self-disci-
pline needed to win.
Mr. Horowitz says leaders
must walk the talk on culture –
Mr. Coughlin couldn’t arrive late
to anything after setting that
rule. L’Ouverture lived with the
men in his army, shared their la-
bours and led their attacks, be-
ing wounded 17 times.
As well, make ethics explicit.
Every company talks about in-
tegrity, but Mr. Horowitz says it’s
an abstract, long-term concept. It
also must be universal. “You
can’t pat yourself on the back for
treating your employees ethical-
ly if you’re simultaneously lying
to your customers, because the
employees will pick up the dis-
crepancy,” he says. L’Ouverture
kept issuing explicit instructions
on behaviour, taking his army to
higher and higher levels, includ-
ing giving food to destitute white
women when his army was
starving in its campaign against
the British.
But the ethical rules have to
be compatible. Mr. Horowitz says
that Uber Technologies Inc. foun-
der Travis Kalanick designed his
culture with great intensity and
had quite explicit, out-of-the-or-
dinary values. But one value,
competitiveness, emerged su-
preme: Always be hustling.
“The underlying message was
clear: If the choice is integrity or
winning, at Uber we do whatever
we have to do to win,” Mr. Horo-
witz adds. Eventually, Uber hit an
ethical storm and Mr. Kalanick
had to go.
Culture can be mysterious.
But there’s substance and clarity
in the idea of memorable, coun-
terintuitive rules to clarify how
to act. And what you do becomes
who you are.Special to The Globe and MailHowtoinspire
greatcultureinthe
workenvironment
Creatingastrongsenseofidentity
requiresshockingandmemorablerules
HARVEYSCHACHTER
MANAGING
ISTOCKS
ix months ago, I was happily in the early
stages of pregnancy and employed full-
time with benefits at a good job. Then,
owing to budget cuts, I was fired with-
out cause.
Being pregnant and unemployed resulted
in some soul searching.
I wasn’t sure whether an “office job” was
right for me and doubted that I would find a
full-time senior position while visibly preg-
nant. So, I stopped looking for work and start-
ed freelancing again.
Freelancing didn’t just reduce my stress lev-
els – it afforded me a better work-life balance,
improved my well-being and led to greater job
satisfaction. Needless to say, this was encou-
raging given my current situation, but I also
know how fortunate I am because, statistical-
ly, I am an anomaly.
According to Statistics Canada, about 7 per
cent of all workers in Canada are self-employ-
ed and unincorporated with no paid help –
that’s how I’m defining freelance.
It’s a relatively small slice of the economic
pie and the slice is even smaller for women. Of
the 7 per cent of freelancing Canadians, less
than half are women (47 per cent). This
means that freelancing women represent
about 3 per cent of the working population in
Canada.
This made me wonder: Would more wom-
en benefit from the flexible work schedule
that I now enjoy?
One of the reasons for this gap among free-
lancers is likely similar to why women contin-
ue to participate about 10 per cent less than
men in the labour force over all – caregiving
responsibilities.
They are leaving the labour force for per-
sonal or family reasons, such as taking care of
children or an elderly family
member. Women provide more
than twice the amount of elder
care and child care than men,
and 15 per cent of women who
left the labour force said they did
so for personal or family reasons,
according to Statscan.
Emna Braham, a senior econ-
omist with the Labour Market
Information Council, says the
main limitations for women par-
ticipating in the work force at
the same rates as men are be-
cause of family responsibilities
such as pregnancy and childbirth
and, later on, child care and el-
der care.
Historically, women have reduced their
working hours by choosing part-time work in
an effort to provide income while maintaining
their caregiving responsibilities. According to
Ms. Braham, women remain four times more
likely to take time off work than men, and two
times more likely to work part-time. But part-
time work is no panacea.
Linda Duxbury, a professor of management
at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton
University, says that working part-time doesn’t
benefit the women who choose it. “They end
up with higher stress levels and higher
burnout than people who don’t go part-time,”
she says.
“They end up doing more of everything [es-
pecially women in professions].”
While freelancing may not be a viable op-
tion for everyone, providing more flexible
work options for employees should be feasi-
ble.
Since the beginning of September, anyone
governed under the Canada Labour Code has
the right to request flexible work arrange-
ments. While definitions of flex work can vary,
the general idea is that an employee can re-
quest flexible start and finish times, a com-
pressed workweek, telecommuting or the op-
tion to work from home, among other possi-
bilities.
These legislative changes don’t guarantee
that an employer will provide flexible work
options, but they do have to provide a good
reason why they can’t accommodate an em-
ployee’s request.
Nora Spinks, chief executive of the Vanier
Institute of the Family, a charitable organiza-tion that examines the reality of family life in
Canada, says that changing the legislation is
significant because it will reduce the stigma
associated with requesting flexible work ar-
rangements.
Historically, women started requesting flex-
ible work schedules to accommodate for child
care as they entered or returned to the work
force in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Ms. Spinks hopes the legislative changes
will have the same effect as when similar legis-
lation was implemented in Australia.
“It changed the conversation,” she says.
“It removed the stigma, and it removed the
gender ghetto related to flex work.”
After flex work was incorporated in the
Australian work force, a report by Chief Exec-
utive Women, an organization representing
Australia’s most senior female leaders across
various sectors, and the global management
consulting firm Bain & Co. said that younger
men were more engaged in gender-diversity
initiatives because they understood that flex-
ible work options and caregiver leave bene-
fited everyone.
The report highlighted Sweden as an exam-
ple, where a mother’s future income increases
by 7 per cent for every month in which her
partner takes a primary caregiver role.
Speaking from experience, no group in the
work force would benefit more from flexible
work changes than women currently in the
“sandwich” generation – those who are in
their 30s and 40s caring for both their own
children and their aging baby-boomer parents.
Those in the sandwich generation represent
approximately 27 per cent of working Cana-
dians, according to Statscan.
Aging baby boomers – typically those born
between 1946 and 1964 – will result in a much
larger proportion of seniors in the population
as they retire. According to the Government of
Canada, by 2030, seniors will make up 23 per
cent of Canadians – that’s one in
four.
With lower fertility rates,
there will be fewer adults to care
for them, which means their care
will fall on the shoulders of fam-
ily members – likely their daugh-
ters.
According to a 2013 study
from the Pew Research Center in
the United States, approximately
a quarter of American women
had quit their jobs because of
their familial responsibilities. In
Canada, according to a 2018 Stat-
scan report, 15 per cent of wom-
en who left their jobs and are
now out of the labour force said they did so for
personal or family reasons.
Although men are taking on more caregiv-
ing responsibilities with their families, accord-
ing to Statscan, women continue to perform
more than twice the amount of elder care and
child care. My own parents are still fairly inde-
pendent; however, as they get older, I know
they’ll require more of my attention and care.
As elder care becomes the “new” child care
and places an additional demand on the sand-
wich generation, employees will require more
flexibility.
“The need for flex is only going to increase,”
Ms. Spinks says. “The question is how do we
manage flex so that no one is left behind?”
The number of on-demand workers, includ-
ing freelancers, is projected to almost triple by
2021, according to a study conducted by Intuit
Tax and Financial Center in the U.S.
As a result, how flexible work is defined in
the 21st century for everyone – not just wom-
en and caregivers – will require an innovative
approach.
While I didn’t choose to leave my job, it
turns out being fired was one of the best
things that’s happened to me. I’ve been able to
focus on my physical well-being, and have had
a very healthy pregnancy. I feel I owe that to
finding a flexible work arrangement through
freelancing.
Here’s to hoping my baby is as flexible as
I’ve learned to be when it comes to work. And
when it comes time to ramping up care for my
parents, I hope I still have the flexibility to
manage both child care and elder care.Special to The Globe and MailISTOCKThefutureoftheworkingworld
mustinvolveflexiblearrangements
CYNTHIAMCQUEENHistorically,women
startedrequesting
flexiblework
schedulesto
accommodatefor
childcareasthey
enteredorreturned
totheworkforcein
the1960s,1970s
and1980s.