Holiday Gift Ideas from The Potentiality
During the holidays our team at The Potentiality likes to keep things loose, festive and chock full of helpful ideas to make Christmas/Hanukah/Solstice a legitimate community building experience. We’ve recommended gifts, shared career advice from holiday characters,...
65 Ways that my Mom Positively Impacts my Work and Life
My mom, Janet, turns 65 on Friday. She’s awesome. My relationship with my mom not only defines my relationship with women, it’s also taught me how to live with a disability and to joyfully and fiercely include folks in a community. According to science, mother-son...
Three Professional Lessons from Ozark
Ozark is Netflix Original American crime drama and thriller. It stars Jason Bateman as Marty Bryde, a financial advisor and all around mild-mannered dad with a seriously dark secret: he uses his financial consulting business to launder money for the Mexican drug...
Five Lessons in Awesomeness from Tom Petty
My favourite podcast is called Stop Podcasting Yourself and a few months ago its hosts Dave Shumka and Graham Clark talked about Running Down a Dream, the documentary about Tom Petty that you can find on Netflix. I love Tom Petty and I think that Dave and Graham are...
Six Strategies for Solving Big Problems
In our professional lives, we’re frequently confronted with difficult decisions whose scope and complexity can be overwhelming. Big problems can place you in organizational paralysis. Here are six strategies for breaking out of that stasis to solve big problems...
Three Professional Lessons from my June Sports Soccer Tournament
Earlier this month, I travelled with soccer players from the Vancouver Street Soccer League to Alert Bay to compete in the Aboriginal soccer tournament called June Sports. To read more about this tournament, you can check out this excellent article in the Guardian...
Three Reasons Why You Should Take Vacation Right Now
My wife just forwarded me an email from her organization’s Human Resources department that reads, “Don’t forget to take your vacation!” You’d think that things like this don’t require reminders, but Canadians aren’t great at having or taking vacation days. As a...
Five Ways that Cycling to Work Enhances Wellbeing
The June 2016 issue of BC Business is chock full of statistics and stories about commuting – Frances Bula argues that big investments in transit, bike lanes and even non-driving Millennials aren’t doing much to de-throne the car as commuters’ choice. I am a...
Five professional lessons from Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is an American neo-noir film chock full of crime, drugs, twisting, and jiving. It’s hip, happening and, while it dates back to 1994, there are plenty of professional lessons scattered between Vincent Vega’s (freaky) stabbing of Mia...
Three Negotiation Tactics I Learned from Toddlers
My son is two years old and he is fast becoming a competent negotiator. Well, not really. But he does try really hard, his logic is pretty funny, and kids are adorable and we can learn a lot from them. Every day I negotiate peoples’ work plans, budgets, partnerships,...
Six Professional Game Changers from Improv
I’m part of a team that is delivering a big piece of work using agile methodology, which I’ve written about before. With our project moving and changing so quickly we find ourselves reacting to new circumstances and having to improvise on the spot a lot. So it made...
Lessons from My Frienaissance
Last week, my friend Godfrey and I rode our bicycles Seattle over the course of three days. It was a whirlwind trip that tested our physical resolve and, at times, problem solving abilities. After two flat tires, countless sports beans, over 300 kilometers of scenic...
Five Professional Lessons from Captain America: Civil War
Last Friday night Kurt and I saw Captain America: Civil War. The summer’s hottest movie taught us a lot about international diplomacy, teamwork, spandex, friendship, and ourselves, too. Here are five professional lessons from Captain America: Civil War that you can...