Approaching the New Year: 5 Inspiring Messages from John Stackhouse
John Stackhouse is a Commerce ’85 graduate from the Smith School of Business and has had an extremely inspiring career. He is currently the Senior Vice-President, Office of the CEO, at RBC, and advises the executive leadership on emerging trends in Canada’s economy, providing insights grounded in his travels across the country and around the world.
Prior to joining RBC, John spent nearly 25 years at the Globe and Mail, where he served as editor-in-chief, editor of Report on Business, and a foreign correspondent in New Delhi, India. Having interviewed a range of prominent world leaders and figures, including Vladimir Putin, Kofi Annan, and Benazir Bhutto, he possesses a deep understanding of national and international affairs.
In the community, John serves as a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, the C.D. Howe Institute and on the boards of Queen's University and the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada.
John is the author of three books: Out of Poverty, Timbit Nation, and Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of a Media Revolution. Watch out for his fourth book coming out in October, “Planet Canada: How our expats are shaping the future”
When disruption hits a sector, innovators don’t wait for someone else to write a playbook or set new rules. They chart a new course and let others follow.
This is your year to be innovators in a whole new world of learning that won’t stop when you leave school. We’re in the early years of a “bionic” era, when humans and machines are starting to work together in incredible new ways, and the pandemic is forcing us all to develop new skills to excel. The winning playbook can be the one you write.
You’re about to embark on an academic year like none before — like none in the 1,000 years of modern university education. It will present frustrations, for sure; create unpleasant surprises, no doubt; and for the pioneer at heart spirit, it be rich with opportunity. You are the class that can learn at lightning speed, share exponentially and create disruptively, because they’re no rule that says you can’t.
When we look back at this pandemic, the exceptional students of 2020-21 will be the ones who use this crisis to develop the skills that are already exploding in demand.
If you look at the Business Council of Canada’s 2020 skills survey (conducted before the lockdown), you’ll see a remarkable surge in demand for all skills digital: data analytics, statistics, quantitative analysis, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, among them. You’ll also see how frustrated business leaders are with a lack of “human skills” that every manager and executive needs.
RBC published a groundbreaking report in 2018 called “Humans Wanted: How Canadian Youth Can Thrive in the Age of Disruption” that described these skills and how they can be applied in a changing economy. And as we watch a new economy emerge — more digital, more socially distanced and more disrupted — we’re seeing those skills even more in demand.
No class is better positioned to develop those bionic skills — to master machines and model humanity — than yours. Here’s some of what you can build in the year ahead:
1. Show resilience, like a river
Everyone talks about resilience. Few really know what it means. It’s about much more than the ability to snap back. Being resilient doesn’t require you to be an elastic band. It requires you to adapt quickly and continuously to changing circumstances — to be more like water than cement. You’re strong enough to withstand pressure. And you’re pliable enough to adapt to pressure. Your resilience will be tested daily — maybe hourly — this term. Take notes. Reflect every day on the pressures you face and how you change course, or hold firm. Because when someone asks, “how resilient are you,” you should be able to say “let me tell you a story. It’s about a river named me.”
2. Collaborate, like a bee
Collaboration is the most overused and under-appreciated skill in business. Too many people confuse it with cooperation. They think sharing notes, or participating in a case study group, is a model of collaboration. It’s not. Collaboration is about charting new courses with others — and using collective intelligence to build something better. it’s about ensuring everyone is opting in, picking up and leaning forward. It’s how bees build hives. They know when to swarm and when to norm. The best collaborators know how to lead, follow, share, criticize — and change. That last part is the secret sauce of collaboration, when everyone in a group knows how to adjust in the moment to make everyone else stronger. It’s how bees build their hives, against all odds. And let’s face it, we all need new hives to get through this.
3. Communicate, like an Obama
Video, text, charts, presentations, Zoom calls: We’ve become the communications species. And yet, why is no one listening? You can change that. You can be the generation that debugs human communication, that takes the venal out of viral and puts social back into social. Take a page, or a tweet, from the Obamas. Either one. They’re both incredible communicators, no matter what you think about their politics. They’re clear and concise. They’re compelling. They’re self-aware. And they listen. You can take that to a whole new place this year. You’ll have to, as you communicate in ways students never have had to. Show us how to do it. Set a new standard. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get the world talking, and listening, again.
4. Think, like a scientist
There’s a reason so many people think we’ve lost our edge in critical thinking, whether it’s in the classroom or the boardroom. We’ve focused so much on showing answers — “look at us, we’ve fixed it!” — that we’ve forgotten how to ask questions. We’ve stopped challenging ourselves. This is the year to change that. When everything’s changing, it’s the time to ask why. Or why not. Sure, the coming academic year may not look like what you signed up for. So, ask yourselves questions, the way scientists do. You may just find that the answers take you to some surprising new places.
5. Create, like a gardener
It’s ironic that in this virtual age, we’re using our hands again. We’re building things, and painting, and playing with puzzles, and digging with our hands. It’s why Amazon is selling so many handicraft kits, and gardening stores are doing a record business. The same can be true in schools, and in business. Just because we’re looking at screens all day doesn’t mean we can’t use our hands. In fact, we need to use them. Manual creativity is one of the things that makes us human. So, in whatever you’re doing, show some creativity. Build a model. Film a sketch. Paint a picture of what the future can look like. No, really, paint that picture. Before someone else does it for you. In each instance, this is your year to shape, with your minds and your hands.
When you look back at 2020-21, what do you want them to see? Someone who was a victim of history, who let the forces of nature shut them down? Or someone who rose to the challenge, who created a better place for those around them? And who developed the skills that came to define a better kind of humanity?
How you shape this year, how you turn crisis into opportunity, will be what every employer and customer wants to know in the years (maybe the decades) ahead. But your ability to rise to this remarkable challenge will be assessed by someone even more important.
As you sculpt a year like no other, don’t forget: the future you is watching.
By John Stackhouse