Toronto, January 25, 8.45pm Last Friday, I spent the morning with the staff of the Yonge Street Mission in downtown Toronto. Their calling is to “demonstrate God’s love, peace and justice to people living in economic, social and spiritual poverty in Toronto”. As we shared ideas with each other, it occurred to me that many of the people I know are living in poverty. I am. You might be. Not all the time, but too much of the time. Webster’s…

Toronto, January 3 2009, 7.34pm Here’s my one-word mantra for 2009: Quintessence I’m writing this blog in a hybrid state of fear and fascination. I’m afraid of how I’m going to reinvent myself in 2009 and I’m fascinated by how I’m going to do it. The revolution that began in 2008 (see https://www.mikelipkin.com//reinvent_yourself.html) will accelerate in 2009. The marketplace will be even tougher. The crises will be even more severe. The competition will be even better. Clients will be even…

  I opened the Globe and Mail this morning to read that Mark Carney, Governor of The Bank of Canada, is imploring the banks to lend money. Isn’t that what banks do? Then I read about the “paradox of thrift” which means that while saving money is good for individuals, it’s bad for the economy when everyone saves at the same time because no-one is spending money. So do we save or do we spend? Then I read about Jim…

  Toronto, 6am, December 11 2008   14 days to Christmas. Even in the silence of my study, I hear Bing Crosby crooning his Christmas carols. I see the lights on my neighbour’s lawn. We’re deep into the Festive Season and it feels like it. Maybe I’m not as naively upbeat as I was in 2007, but I’m wiser and stronger.  Everything seems more real. The conversations are more real. People are more real. The issues are more real.  There…

Toronto, December 3 2008, 8.30am   I’ve just spent the last two days with a group of 200 executives from the international division of one of Canada’s largest banks. As you can imagine, the focus of the entire session was the management of risk.   In the last three months, the word “risk” has assumed a whole new set of meanings. If it signalled fear and danger before, now it signals chaos and confusion. There’s a new strain of risk.…

Friday November 21 2008 – Air Canada Flight 847, somewhere between Munich and Toronto. 12pm EST I’m into the seventh hour of a nine hour flight from Munich to Toronto.  I’ve just delivered a program to Deloitte, the global professional services firm, in Hamburg, Germany. My mission was to coach a group of managers and partners in the art of “Preeminent Conversation” – the kind of conversation that creates opportunities, inspires ideas and builds relationships. It was a transformational experience…

Toronto, 4.55am, November 12 2008 I don’t sleep so well these days. Seven hours of high quality REM sleep are a distant memory. Now it’s 5-6 hours of fitful sleep, fragmented by night-time frights and bogeymen who feed on my post-meltdown angst. On the other hand, I’ve never been more awake. I’ve never felt more plugged into the world. I’ve never been had so many opportunities to be brilliant. Every meeting and every conversation is a chance to make the…

Toronto, Tuesday., November 4, 6.10am   Last Saturday, I facilitated a full day program with 500 new, highly skilled  immigrants to Toronto. They came from all over the world. For many of them, English is their second language. Many of them also come from countries with very different cultures to Canada. For all of them, just being in the room was a monumental achievement. Now they have to find work and that was the objective of the session. Together with TRIEC,…

Toronto, October 28, 8.10am   Last night, I did my daily workout at the Toronto Athletic Club. It’s an upscale gym whose members are drawn primarily from the surrounding downtown professional service community. Besides the gloomy atmosphere created by the TV report on the global stock-market meltdown, I also noted that there were less people working out. The usual  5.30pm rush wasn’t materializing. Could it be that people are less motivated to work out when they’re less motivated in general?…