This week I joined the rather wonderful Dalibor Petrovic for a conversation titled The Pain and Promise of Canada on his TechTonic webinar series. Normally I’m the one doing the interviewing, for projects or podcasts, so it was a nice switch up to be the guest, reflecting out loud on something that’s been gnawing at me for a while.
How can a country with so much going for it feel like it’s constantly underachieving?
I love Canada, always have since I was about 7 and flew here on my own to spend the summer with my aunt. I might have started working here sort of by accident, but I moved here on purpose and eventually became a citizen. There’s a reason too why I chose to build Now or Never here too. And yet, it’s hard not to notice that this country, what I’d say is still a project, is stuck.
Canada has brilliant people (born and raised, as well as those transplanted here), enviable energy resources, forests that stretch forever and abundant fresh water. Our cities are perhaps a bit dated, but they’re pretty safe and solid in the grand scheme of things. Our politics, for the most part, still function, even if we’d all like them to be better. Our diversity is a serious strength. And yet we always seem to stop short of doing truly bold things. We do like a plan though.
It’s like we’ve all quietly agreed not to rock the boat. Playing to not lose, never really playing to win. Which is a beautiful irony given the best business strategist of the recent era is a) Canadian, and b) wrote a book called Playing to Win.
Nice isn’t really a strategy.
One of the things I said as a bit of a provocation before the session was that Canada is the “world’s nicest underachiever”, and I did mean it. Canadians, across all sorts of institutions are so committed to keeping everyone comfortable, that they often water down the things that might have made a real difference to something nobody can really get upset about, but also, nobody really gets behind either.
It’s like that line I keep hearing in all sorts of offices and boardrooms: “We just want to make sure everyone’s aligned.” Alignment isn’t bad, you don’t want everything running off in different directions, but when it results in inertia, that’s a problem.
We prefer consensus over progress. Alignment over healthy conflict. Elbows up is for hockey and Americans only. In trying to keep everyone happy, we clip the wings of ambition, so nothing takes flight. We settle for “good enough,” even when we’re capable of something extraordinary. The whole “aim for bronze” mentality is real, so real I genuinely had a client paint the slogan in their reception area. I wish I had the picture of that!
Now I’m not saying we need losers, but you don’t help them by holding everyone else back. Focus on racking up wins all over the board for heaven’s sake!
Confusing managing with momentum.
For all the hyperbole in the news just now, Canada isn’t really in full crisis mode. Which might be a bit of the problem. We’ve seen shit hit the proverbial fan in COVID, and we managed it in our nice way, casually reverting to business as usual. You don’t get the luxury of big moments of reckoning all too often, more the quiet, bureaucratic, managed decline that comes with a fatiguing system.
Only when you get to really bad bit, it’s too late.
I couldn’t resist using the opportunity to use the example of trains here. Canada is effectively a nation that exists off the back of a hundred and something year old railway. We’re still running trains, but no one really gets hyped up asking why the train from Toronto to Montreal takes longer now than it did in 1970. We’ve got lots of plans and studies about how dedicated high speed passenger rail would be a good thing here, and even now we’re doing a bit more study before getting stuck into actually building something. Maybe your kids might get to ride it.
All this while, we don’t seem terribly bothered that this is managing a system that would look silly in Eastern Europe, let alone East Asia.
We’ve got energy galore, both carbon based, and renewable, but no urgency to redesign the grid for zero emission world. We’re educating more people than almost any other country, but we’re doing it as if we’re still pre-internet, and with limited opportunities to apply their learnings in our institutions.
There’s a term I use a lot when talking to clients: ossification. Systems, over time, become rigid because everything tends to be accretive, more policies, processes, procedures. Well-meaning rules and risk mitigation stack up until they choke the thing they were meant to protect.
Let me give another good train example, we slow our shiny new trains down, because they’re not big or heavy enough to trigger the old world systems that work the level crossing gates. We manage the old, rather than let the momentum move us to the new.
But there’s still time.
What gives me hope is that, deep down, this country wants to do better. You can feel it, everywhere. The analogy I like is a bit akin to someone coming out of a bad relationship, suddenly looking in the mirror and thinking, “Right. Yeah, I can see why she left me, I’m a bit fat, probably boring to hang out with, stuck in my ways even. I should reinvent myself..”
Trump is Canada’s blessing, a bolt from the not so blue. Shaking us from our hibernation and remind us of who we might want to be instead. Beneath the bad haircut, ill-fitting stone wash denim and 20lbs of excess fat, there’s still some good bones.
So what?
We need nation building projects, signature moves, bold experiments, a little more curiosity and a lot more courage … at every level, from Ottawa and our provincial seats of government, to the C-suite, to our own office desks.
Dalibor asked me what I’d tell the next Prime Minister (… which I’m very happy to oblige with should Mark or Pierre want to give me a bell).
Unite the country. You’re not just a party leader anymore, time to bring us together and pull in the same direction.
Get out in the world. See how far others have leapt ahead, make friends with them, and do some trading, or at least be a good magpie.
Make something real. We don’t need another policy framework, we need action. So make that happen early, and try to deliver something inside the term.
Then he asked it about business leaders.
Be honest about where we benchmark. Stop pretending to be ‘world class’, and get out in the world just like your new PM is doing. (this will be a common theme).
State your ambition. Put your goal on the wall and chase it, even if you stumble a few times trying to make it happen.
Work with government. This isn’t a solo sport, don’t bemoan politicians, help them, and ask for help back. Team Canada and all that.
Then, the best bit, what can we do?
Get uncomfortable. Travel, learn, compare and bring ideas home. This is as true for our political leaders as it is for us.
Be a bit naughty in your work. Try something without asking permission, find the smallest place to make a difference and do it, show rather than tell.
Talk to people who don’t think like you. Especially now, back to that first one for the PM. Pierre can’t bash Mark, and Mark can’t bash Pierre after April 28. So if your mate Dave, or that guy Tony from LinkedIn, seem to say things you disagree with, talk, ask, share rather than shout.
There’s a version of Canada we haven’t built yet.
It’s more curious, more daring, more confident, more resilient and it will win more than it loses.
We’re not there yet, not even close, but to move forward, we need to stop politely managing decline and start building the new futures.
While I write a lot about Challenger Cities on t’other Substack*, this is one for Canada being a Challenger Country. And it’s going to take all of us to make that happen.
To being Challengers.
Share this post