Quitting en masse is an attention getter. Quitting an international festival en masse in a slumping industry weeks before the big event is a Times Square LED Billboard outside your bedroom window.  10 members of the Hot Docs team resigned together on March 25, just a month before the world renowned Hot Docs Festival is set to begin on April 25. While I have no first hand knowledge of the situation, and the details are scarce, the bread crumb trail that exists leads to a failure of leadership that was both preventable and is still fixable.

First, dismiss the idea that people will look down on your accomplishments. They won’t. What grosses out colleagues and customers is the person who takes credit for everything, blame for nothing, inflates their own achievements, and diminishes everyone else’s. What we find odious is someone who only talks about their own achievements and never shines the light on someone else. That’s the braggart. That person is icky. So, before you start talking about yourself, there’s a few things you can do.  

So, what makes conforming to a ticket policy that other major artists are using different for Springsteen’s most dedicated followers? The root of the issue is found in Backstreets’ tweet about the ticketing problems. They exclaimed, “So this is what a crisis of faith feels like.” The publication deified their favourite artist, holding Springsteen to idealized standards. The Boss is not completely off the hook here. In concert, he often acts like a carnival tent preacher, inviting the audience to join the “Ministry of rock n’ roll”. Not every fan is going to realize that an evangelist is just another performer.  A relationship based on idolatry is headed for heartbreak.

Your brand is the way you are perceived by others. Corporations pay big bucks on image management. On a personal level we call it a reputation but it’s the same thing. People form opinions about us based on the way we dress, the things we say and what we do, especially when we face adversity. If Boudreau had quit, if he had given interviews complaining about the situation, he would have been justified. He did neither. Instead, he showed up every day and coached.  In Boudreau’s final days, when asked about his reaction to the situation, he said he’d be a fool not to acknowledge that he knew what was going on. Then he said, “You come to work, and you realize, you know, how great the game is.” He declined the chance to complain. Instead, he talked about his love of hockey. Boudreau controlled himself beautifully.

Each round of the MLB playoffs is a whirlwind of possibilities, where inches determine outcomes. Predicting winners based on the skills of the players is a great way to be wrong about something. As the author of ALL CAPS: Stories That Justify an Outrageous Hat Collection, I’m picking the winners based on criteria that I believe is just as reliable - which team has the best hats. So here’s a round by round breakdown of the caps that will go to the top.

Smith rambled between justifying his actions and apologizing to everyone but Rock. He cried, trying to brush off his tears as a tribute to other peoples’ accomplishments. To me, he looked conflicted, confused. He'd done what he been trained to do since youth, defend his wife, right? But it didn’t feel right. To me, it looked like Smith was crying because he was upset and couldn’t make sense of it. I’ve seen that look before – in my children, two sons.

Rogan said, “It’s a strange responsibility to have this many viewers and listeners and It’s nothing that I prepare for and it’s nothing that I ever anticipated.”

Perhaps not, but it’s nice to see he’s now taking the responsibility seriously. As Andrew MacDonald, a Facebook friend of mine who works in the media, put it when he shared Rogan’s Instagram video, “It’s cute seeing him figure this out as he goes.” MacDonald meant it as a compliment, but there’s a bigger lesson here.

I watched all eight hours of Get Back, Peter Jackson’s new documentary about the Beatles, for one reason. It was a rare chance to see one of the greatest bands ever do their jobs during one of their most contentious times. I’m fascinated with how people work, particularly creative people. It’s easy to forget that art is the product of labour. It’s work! Watching the Beatles, I found some workplace takeaways we can all apply in our lives.

You didn’t have to be Finnish to belong at the basement restaurant in the Finnish Labour Temple Building. Everyone, from every background, would come to the Hoito, our complicated history crowding at simple tables, together. There was always a long line to get in.

Diversity is better for the world. Social inbreeding only leads to deformities. 215 children in a mass grave at a residential school site in Kamloops B.C. are a testament to what happens when one society thinks everyone needs to be like them. We need to do better.

Canadian history is as horrible as anyone else’s. Until Canadians own their villainous past, we can’t fix our ugly present. In this century Indigenous women have been abandoned and forced into sterilization. First Nations communities still lack clean drinking water. None of that will change until white Canadians quit being smug about a moral superiority that doesn’t exist.

There’s a lot to be angry about. A heaping helping of my anger, though, is reserved for the people who looked at a disease that is affecting everyone in the world and that requires all of our help to address and whose biggest concern was “what about me”. They protest against inconvenience and only listen to the voice in their heads. Their selfishness and arrogance have been paid for with other people’s lives. They’re also holding back the recovery created by the incredible efforts of scientists and medical workers.

In Ontario, we’re more than a year into the pandemic, with vaccines rolling out around the province. Yet, we’re still in lockdown until at least next month. This is what failure looks like.

It’s not a failure of science. Science has come through heroically. It’s not a failure of compliance. I see masks everywhere I go. Every business I enter has marked out paths and enforces social distancing. This is a failure of leadership. Epic, catastrophic, debilitating failure.

If you want to see leadership fail or fly, pay attention during meetings. Here are examples of how leadership succeeds or sinks in four meetings.

Sixty years after its release, I’m still listening to “A Change is Gonna Come”. But when will a change come? How many times does this sixties anthem have to soothe my pain when I hear the same news in the twenty-first century? - Marcelle Edwards

So, is a skunk aimed at children that normalizes rape culture worse than a song aimed at adults that celebrates a woman’s right to control her sexuality? Yes! Clearly. So why are people having such a tough time handling this?

Before it became a tool of Russian election interference, helped white supremacists organize and divided families, social media had such promise. But there is one social network that still works, and it may give us the roadmap back to civility.

However, no matter how kindly it’s handled, or what words are used – released, laid off, packaged out – it feels like fired. For the next few weeks, my head was spinning. Good salary. Gone. Corner office. Gone. Leadership role. Gone. My wife went to work. My kids went to school. I was at home with the last person I wanted to spend time with – me.

In the last two weeks, I’ve been sent three podcasts. All of them were terrible. Not one started the broadcast by telling the audience what the show was about. They didn’t give the audience a reason to listen. Structure is as important as the questions you ask. And just because you can ask questions doesn’t mean you can conduct an interview. It’s a craft.

I am saying black women’s talents have been overlooked, to all our detriment. That may be changing. An inclusive new world is something white people, particularly men, need to support. I’m not just talking about tiki-torch carrying nationalists, or the Mitch McConnell’s who wag their fingers at injustice while refusing to do anything about it. I’m talking about well-meaning people like me.

The CRTC didn’t just change the rules. They changed the idea.

In a speech to the Canadian Club on March 12, 2015 CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais explained the new policy, a shift from quantity to quality. One line from Blais’s speech stands out to me:

“[The new rules create] an environment where Canadians want to watch content made by our creators – not because it is forced upon them, but because it is good. Indeed, because it is great.”

Blais’s speech displays a profound ignorance of television production, and the creative process itself.