Career Life Stages for Women

Career Life Stages

This is not going to be a blog with any deep meaning. The idea is to construct a board game wherein the issues women face in trying to become directors and senior board members. As noted in previous blogs, there are a few Board games which will inform this one. 

• Careers Board Game by Parker Brothers
• The Game of Networking
• The Game of Life

What do we learn from each of these games?

One's career is divided into 5 distinct, but in some cases , overlapping areas including:

1. Pre-professional
2. Entry level
3. Mid level
4. Senior level
5. Leadership

The goal of the game is to develop awareness of:

1. the importance of establishing clear career goals and staying focused on those goals;
2. establishing first contacts;
3.  career options as a director, and what careers might be best to enable you, the player to get a leadership position on a corporate board;
4. the best strategies to employ to help the player advance;
5. how to negotiate through certain steps when the player is presented not only with opportunities but also with barriers;
6. the best outcome for,  or solution to,  each challenge. 

This game would move the player through a number of different processes vital to career networking with other players. 

Think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and put one's career in a similar pyramid. 

1.  Operational. So, the earliest step possible within a career trajectory.
2. Functional
3. From here a careerist might move in one of 2 directions depending on her qualifications, interests, experiences and expertise. She might choose a professional career path or a management career path.
4. If she chooses a professional career path, she might consider serving as an "expert" consultant in a particular sector or industry. This provides considerable career flexibility allowing her to move between sectors, including working at senior levels in the public service. 
5. If she chooses a management career path and depending on her interests, she may choose to be a manager (or at least go the supervisory route in her career). In which case she moves to a 1st line supervisor, mid manager, senior manager and then into the C-suite. Typically, this would keep her in one sector, one industry but not necessarily in one company. 

It is important to recognize that there are victory points along the way including:

• money;
• recognition within an industry, within a sector, within a company, within a profession;
• authority. In this latter, one may also get points for how she helps colleagues, mentors and , in some cases, sponsors (at later stages in the game. 

I'm stuck..help

Rate this NBPSPP

Why do I doubt that how the Board of NBPSPP evaluates itself is subject to any logical approach? I guess that it is because I haven't been told!?

So, a few questions which might fit into a self appraisal.

1. Do board members have job descriptions?
2. Were you given a job description when you applied and when you joined?
3. Which of these best describes a board meeting?

•  fun
• interesting
• boring
• too long
• too short
• about right
• move briskly
• move slowly
• most board members participate in discussions
• a few members tend to dominate
• members feel free to express ideas and opinions
• members are reluctant to speak up

    4. At either of the last 2 board meetings, did someone raise the question about the relevance of an issue to the Plan's mission?

    5. if a member of the staff (such as it is at Vestcorp) comes to you with a complaint, what do you do?

    6. Which of the following statements best describes the communications that the board receives from Vestcorp?

• too much info
• just about right
• too little info
• sometimes irrelevant
• unclear
• mixed
• we get info prefaced by a statement of purpose

    7. Which of these characteristics apply to a majority of board members?

• zealously committed to the Plan's mission
• loyal to the Plan and its best operation
• strong interest inboard activities
• probably concerned about the Plan and its mission but not overly expressed
• uneven display of interest

     8. The board has an annual work plan about what it intends to accomplish over the next year.

      9. Are minutes of the last meeting and an agenda for up coming meetings sent out in advance.

     10. Are board members generally knowledgeable about the issues confronting retirees and particularly about the changes in the social, economic and political environment in which they live?

      11. Which of the following best describes the climate of the board?

• cool
• stormy
• foggy
• cloudy with occasional showers
• clear and bright
• fresh breezes
• hot

This might be an interesting self appraisal for the board members, as a start...which is pretty much where this board is in its journey to effective governance evaluation. 

Next, a rating scale for board performance. 

What matters most to a Saint John citizen??(#whatmattersmost)

 Looking at the City of Saint John open data portal will emphatically not tell you who or what a local citizen is..or does. 

Compare this to , for example, Calgary or Toronto or Ottawa or Winnipeg 

• Calgary is (or was) oil hosting 63% of all petroleum engineers and 40%of geologists in N. Am.
• Toronto is home 38% of financial and investment analysts, 35% of securities brokers, 32% of actors and comedians, 30% of theatre workers, 31% of IT analysts in Canada.
• Ottawa is home to 30% of economists and 20% of policy researchers.
• Winnipeg is home to 12% of Canada's musicians and singers (although it has 2.25% of Canada's population. 

An open data portal might present what clusters persist or exist in Saint John encouraging birds of a feather to flock together. To encourage one group to cluster who might the city recruit to help?

• The university,
• the community college,
• the board of trade
• the provincial government??
• the feds???

How creative is Saint John society? What venues might the city foster to build this creativity? How do city leaders define creativity? 

Through:

• restaurants up town?
• performance venues
• clubs
• art studios
• music studios
• impact hubs
• sports clubs (amateur, semi pro, pro)
• Yoga coops, kickboxing clubs, bicycle clubs, canoeing/kayaking clubs.
• Political clubs (Politics is said to be a blood sport in the Maritimes. You could fool me with the really poor voter engagement at all levels , here).  

These are not easy questions to answer. But, questions are the first step to building an open data portal. 

#whatmattersmost is a creative environment. The nest post will start to focus how one might begin to build a creative hub.

Demography is destiny

Who is Saint John?

The title of this blog entry is taken directly from Richard Florida's book Who's your city?, page 242. One need look no further to find out how an open data portal ought to introduce itself...and how a city might define itself. 

Florida notes that:

• 39% of Canadian households are married couples. What is the make up of Saint John?
• 22% of Canadians live in a classic nuclear family. What does Saint John look like?
• 5% of Canadian families are single parent led with children. How many such families are there here? How many are led by women? Men? What is their economic status?
• 10% of Canadians live alone. How many live alone here?
• 1.5% of all Canadian households are gay or lesbian. What is the %'age here?
• How many people speak French as a first language in the home? English? other?
• How many people were born here and how many are "from away"?
• How many people move to the city? How many people stay? How many people move away? (and what are their age groups?)

Answers to these very basic questions will give a prospective migrant an idea of how varied the population is and how he or she might be accepted in the community. 

Times change and Canada is changing. An open data portal with even this minimal data will inform the community , and those who might consider moving here, how and if, Saint John is changing with Canada, how inclusive it is and by extension, how creative it is. But most importantly, even this baseline data will inform a person about his/her "fit" and with the city's "personality". 

How might Saint John determine "what matters most" when describing its character??

NBPSPP Board Evaluation

The purpose of evaluation is to examine how well the Board implement's the organization's strategic plan, attends to issues of quality and manages risk. There is no point in performing an evaluation unless its results are reported. 

Such a report alerts the stakeholders (us as retirees, in this case) about the level of skill of the members and the degree to which they are able to diligently perform their duties, on our behalf. 

The benefits of a Board evaluation include:

• it informs us how well the board is serving our interests;
• it ensures that there is a role differentiation between Board and management;
• it assures us that there is collegiality and teamwork in governance;
• it measures the degree to which the mechanics of accountability are achieved;
• it assures us that the board it engaged in ethical decision making;
• it assures retirees that decisions are transparent;
• it leads to better board functioning. 

Typically, the board evaluation process is led by the governance or the nominating committee. For NBPSPP, it is led by the governance committee. At the last annual meeting, the Board Chair reported that there was a skills matrix self evaluation. This is certainly one approach. This informs the individual board member that they ought to be skilled in a number of different areas. However.....this is not the whole story.

There is much, much more to this than just that.

1. The results ought to be presented to the Board, and discussed with regards to the Plan's strategy.  Do trustees have the skills to fulfill the strategy? (don't know)
2. How will the individual and the Board, generally, address deficiencies? (don't know) 
3. Should the Plan members be told about these deficiencies? 
4. Perhaps members are being too hard on themselves..or perhaps they lack insight. Is a self evaluation followed by a peer evaluation? Does the Board Chairman conduct individual interviews with these results in hand? The trustees, after all report to the Board Chairman.(no, no)
5. How does the evaluation process affect the Board continuing education program for the year? (doesn't appear, so)
6. How does the Board evaluation process affect member recruitment? (nope)
7. Is there a more detailed evaluation of Board leadership? By whom is that done ?  And are the results reported to the membership? (no, and no)

It is all well and good to find fault but what might be some (relatively) quick fixes to this problem?

1. Under take a quick and dirty peer assessment. This will introduce the concept of a dedicated and accountable review process.
2. A self review process can include an assessment of where you and a  comparison to where the Board, generally,  thinks of its performance as a team. 
3. A peer review process of board functioning can additionally, point to areas where the board might perform better.
4. Follow this with a peer assessment of Board leadership, generally, and at the committee level. 
5. Where there are new Board members, under take an evaluation through the Chair , of the new members' performance. 

Such an approach will:

• help new members get a feel for their own performance and where it might improve;
• help leaders serve their members better;
• help the Board function better as a team;
• help member: member relationships

by touching on:

• policy adherence;
• strategy implementation;
• stakeholder connection

Tomorrow, I will cover a few topics specific to this kind of performance appraisal. 

selling Saint John through open data

Open Data and an Hierarchy of Needs

This sounds like a lecture about Maslow.
Its not but...
                     .....there is something to learn from his hierarchy of needs if a City like Saint John is going to design an open data portal which will be of some use to its citizens

• What are the opportunities here?
• What are the basic services...and are they any good?
• What is the leadership like and do people care to select good leaders? Is the leadership stable or is it changed as often as one would a pair of socks?
• Does the community value diversity? Is it clean? What are crime rates like?
• Does the community value aesthetics?

Each of these may be quantified.

opportunities 

• How good is the local economy? A scan of a few editions of the Telegraph Journal might help. An open data portal might describe how people are employed, what sorts of skills stay and what skills move on ( say from university).
• What job opportunities are there?
• What are the median salaries?
• What is the cost of living and how does that compare to comparable cities in Canada?  
• What are the opportunities for continuous learning?
• Is there a robust social enterprise movement?
• Is there an impact hub? How many businesses spin off from it?
• How many start ups are there each year and in what sector?

Opportunity extends beyond the economy. What are the chances that you will be able to build social as well as economic networks in this community? In other words, is Saint John a place you can easily plug into?

basic services

What are these?

Easy.

Education, health care, housing, safety, public health

• What is the range of educational programs available in Saint John? The quality and proliferation of such services is clearly an indication of the quality and proliferation of other amenities...not to mention how creative the community is. 
• How active is the Brilliant Labs project? 
• How many start ups from this project start up each year and in what sector?
• How easy is it to get a family physician? a dentist? a physio?
• How good is the hospital? In some provinces, hospitals publish a report card, comparing themselves to hospitals in other communities. These report cards cover pretty much anything you might want to know including the range of services, infection rates, wait times, ALS. In the US, they also publish mortality data.
• Public health will present overall morbidity rates. How healthy is the community?
• What is the housing market like? Costs, commute times, sale and re-sale rates.
• How well are children treated? What are poverty rates?
• Public transportation may also be a factor. How easy is it to move around the city? Are there bike lanes. How many people use public transit to get to work? How many people drive? 

leadership

• What does the local media say about the leadership of the City.
• What are the voting patterns at the local, provincial and national levels?
• Is the local DEC (Board of Education) active?

aesthetics

• Is there local theatre, an arts community, a school of performing arts and how well are these attended?
• How many local restaurants are there? How long do they last?
• Is there a local culinary school?
• How active is local amateur sport? How many players move onto senior levels? How well attended are local sporting events? How many fitness programs are there? 

These are a few questions which might be answered through an open data portal. A more robust portal could focus its data on the degree of creativity exists within the City. More on this later.

Why bother evaluating??

If they bothered to ask....

Who?
A challenge in building an open data portal is trying to determine what data to use. Otherwise, as we have with the Saint John open data portal, citizens are left with a mess of data which is meaningless. The best feature of building a portal is that citizens from all walks of life are asked for their views. 

What citizens?

• Young Singles. 
• Mid Career
• Families with children
• Empty nesters
• Retirees
• Professionals
• Gay/lesbians

What kinds of questions might city planners ask during a citizen engagement forum?

1. What do you like least and most about Saint John?
2. Where else would you prefer to live and , why?
3. What kind of work do you do, and would you prefer to do? Can you do it here?
4. What is most important to you, now? Work, dating, a mate, a house..?
5. How important are cultural activities? Museum, cinema, film, art, music?
6. What are the characteristics of city living which attract you? 

This data, when developed can point to the best city for the people interviewed, by group, using any one of a number of tools including:

• www.creativeclass.com/_v3/whos_your_city/overview/

• www.moneysense.ca/canadas-best-places-to-live-create-your-own-ranking

Saint John ranks 375/431 cities in Canada, on the Moneysense list. Moncton ranks 155 and Fredericton ranks 149. Why? What might we do about that?

The categories in the Moneysense survey include:

• low unemployment
• high incomes
• affordable housing
• affordable rent
• access to healthcare
• healthy population growth
• low taxes
• low crime
• easy to walk, bike, take transit
• strong arts/sports community

None of these categories is listed in the Open Data Portal. Nor does the City's strategic plan address how the City might improve its standing in any of these categories. Yet, this data could prove effective in quantifying any of the concerns or points raised by a citizen engagement focus.

To be sure, there are a few categories missing..such as school performance, attendance rates, school ranking, access to community college , access to and affordability of,  university (across all age groups), ranking of the community college and the university , opportunity for professional development through post secondary institutions. 

Learning more from history

What might the Board of NBPSPP learn from:

Dey (2000)
A walk through the history of good governance development brings us to the Dey Report, circa 2000, in Canada. In the post of a couple of days ago, this report was referenced as a follow-up to Cadbury. However. there are a few specifics which more progressive organizations add to their good governance guidelines. 

• Stewardship policies or how the Board recognizes that they manage our money for our best interests. OMERs, for example has such a statement.
• A hallmark of good stewardship is the existence of a strategic plan , outlining the social, technological, economic and especially political changes which may affect the pension landscape. Transparency is critical. Do the retirees know what the Board knows. Might the retirees be able to comment on the issues raised in such a plan. What evidence is there that certain key stakeholders have been consulted? (those key stakeholders are likely the principle unions represented on the Board. ) Do the other non represented retirees see the world the same way that the unions de?
• A topic raised throughout these blogs has been risk management. Dey encouraged Boards to take a specific look at risk. He came up short on suggesting s risk committee. None the less, there is a specific requirement that the Auditor comment on any risk provisions that the Board has taken and what material impacts these might have. Dey did recommend that these risks be reviewed with the retirees at least at the annual meeting. Later reports suggest that as a part of the preparation for the annual meeting, Independent Board members review these in "tours" or special meetings with key stakeholders up to 9 months before the annual meeting. 
• Dey recommended effective succession planning for the Board. This pre-supposes that there is a nominating process and that this process is linked to the strategic planning process. Further, as a part of this process, there is a skills matrix which guides director recruitment. 
• Dey focused on transparency in communication with stakeholders. The Board of NBPSPP actually works at this, and to an extent is quite good. The annual meeting is streamed live and a video is left up for retirees to watch. Questions are taken from the floor. There are quarterly newsletters to the retirees. And, in 2018, there will be a web site. The next step is to have a clear social (and other) media policy. 
• The integrity of internal controls at critical. Dey's report came before the Enron fiasco but after the Anderson debacle. None the less, Pension plans cannot be too careful. CAPSA has excellent guidance on this. A segment of the Auditor's report should focus on this..but doesn't. 

If we were to grade the NBPSPP Board on the Dey recommendations, it would receive 1/7. So, based on these two reports, both really at the cusp of good governance accountability, the NBPSPP Board has work to do...as do we , the retirees. 

Bio's, what matters most and what we learn

What do we learn from....

1992.
What do we learn from the Cadbury Report (gotta read the last post) about good governance and the importance of transparent evaluation. The Cadbury report made recommendations designed to improve board member conduct. The idea was to professionalize the conduct of directors which had, after the fiascos and naked corruption of the '80's, deteriorated badly. There were a few strategies proposed.

• Board members were to be independent in mind and in fact. So, no more choosing from a shallow pool composed of old boys. Nominating Committees had to move well beyond the usual suspects. So, not only should members be recruited based on diversity of background but also based on education and experience. While the NBPSPP Board reports that it has nominating guidelines, none of us mere retirees know what that is. 
• Transparency was important. The Board members should not be accountable to themselves with an Audit Committee composed of senior board members, an Auditor with a permanent sinecure, and a limited audit report based on GAAP. Instead , it was expected that the Board report to the shareholders. One might wonder how the NBPSPP fits this recommendation? Well, the Audit committee is composed of senior board members, chaired by the Board chair. So, in effect, the Board audits itself and controls what is reported to the retirees. 
• Cadbury recommended that the Board not be dominated by a single person or group. In the NBPSPP situation, the Board is Chaired by a union rep. And the majority of the Board is made up of representatives form the various union. 
• Cadbury recommended that there be regular (board and committee meetings).. which NBPSPP has.
• He recommended that there be a fixed agenda. We don't know that there is.
• He recommended that the Board and committees from time to time use professional, independent advice. NBPSPP Board does not, nor is there any move to do so. A question one might have is what their risk priorities are. Is it wise to be paying out more than we are taking in from retirees, depending exclusively on the revenues from investment to pay the shortfall? Was investment revenue of 6.75% in 2016 a satisfactory return?
• NED's ought to dominate the board. NBPSPP has 2/8 members who might qualify as this.
• Cadbury recommended that the term of office be limited. It is for NBPSPP.
• There ought to remuneration disclosure. There is for the board and management. However, having disclosed remuneration, is management worth what they receive? Should board members be paid more than the $250.meeting remuneration, when they are overseeing a plan with $420+m in the pot?

If there was a report card for NBPSPP performance based on Cadbury, the Board would receive 2.5/8 . 

What matters most...in Saint John

The folks designing the City of Saint John Open Data portal might want to consider why they are creating a portal, in the first place. If it is to acquaint people interested in coming to the City, there are some pretty basic questions which ought to be asked.

1. Is there physical and economic security? There is a portal for community safety but it misses the point. People are looking for a degree of security. Police and Fire services fit in there but are not the significant concern. The primary concern is the overall direction of the economy and the availability of jobs.
2. Do the basic services exist? These include schools , health care, affordable housing, decent roads, and public transportation. Are the schools competitive nationally? Is there school choice? This being Canada, what are the opportunities to get educated in one's language of choice? Can you get a family physician?
3. What is the quality of local and provincial leadership both elected and within the business community. Are there opportunities for public and local engagement...and does the population currently take advantage of these. As noted in my last blog this goes to voting patterns, how robust the volunteer community is, and how active and innovative the business community is.
4. How open is Saint John? Are diverse demographic groups including families with children, ethnic and racial minorities, senior citizens, immigrants , and gays and lesbians welcome here?
5. Saint John has a truly beautiful up town core. The province has draw dropping beauty. What opportunities exist to sample and live these amenities? What are its cultural offerings and how diverse are these? 

What, then are the things which matter most, which define Saint John? Can these be quantified and presented on the Open Data portal? Which ones ought the team start with first? One might find that aesthetics (#5) and basic services factor high on the list. But consider this, as well. People want to come to a place where there is a chance to earn a good income, to be with people who have a high educational attainment, are involved in a creative enterprise and where there is a high degree of tolerance for diversity. 

With what cities are we competing?

                                        ....In other words, who might we copy?

My top 8 in Canada...the one's I have visited/lived in ...would include:

• Ottawa/Gatineau
• Whitehorse
• Fredericton
• Charlottetown
• Sherbrooke
• Canmore
• Yellowknife
• Kingston/Thousand Islands Region

More on this tomorrow. If you want to comment, what are your favourite spots and why?