Double Trouble: Look Back & Ahead

Photo Credit: Richard Chicoine iCopyright 2009

This month's Key Leadership Skill: Vision!

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Leaders: extract the most important elements from the past - use "Hindsight" to examine the reasons for certain decisions and their impact...

&

...project to the future - by looking for trends, planning a variety of scenarios, reflecting on outcomes, asking appreciative inquiry questions and understanding how systems work in a holistic way -

These leaders have a reputation for being

"VISIONARY".

HINDSIGHT Example: Mission Island Thunder Bay 1920

“When we were kids back in the 1930’s,our rambles often took us to Coney Island.

We packed a lunch and headed for the Jackknife Bridge....to Coney Island. It’s part of Mission Island. It was probably named after the once famous location near New York.

The beach at Coney Island was nice. The water was clean and cold and the bottom sandy. An open area of maybe 10 or 20 acres was, at one time, well used. How did this place get started?

It was apparently once popular as a boating and picnic destination. Soon there was a trail which became a road, driveable by 1921. About the same time, the city did build a street railway line to the beach, but it apparently closed by 1924 or 25. Was it a busy place? You bet!

People used to camp in tents. There was even a little store that sold Scollie’s ice cream. We understand that there was also a dance pavilion.

Coney Island had competition.

A new location known as Chippewa Park was opened in 1921. It also had streetcars, a zoo, a merry-go-round, tourist cabins and a dining room.

Coney Island was later abandoned and remained so until the 1960’s when the old municipal dump near the airport was closed. The island location became the local sanitary landfill for a number of years - hence the big hump that is visible today.

When the Lakehead Regional Conservation Authority leased the property from the city in the 1980’s, the road was improved and the top of the old dump became a parking lot.

It has regained popularity...the board walk, walking trails and a goodly supply of shore birds, deer and other wildlife make it a nice destination for a couple of hours of exercise or just to sit and watch the waves.”

Source: The Chronicle Journal, September 20, 2009. By Art Gunnell for the Thunder Bay Museum. www.thunderbaymuseum.com



VISION Example: 2020 in Canada

Would you agree with author Andrew Cohen when he states that:

“Canada, on July 1, 2020... goes through the motions again. The nation roams around under a cloud of amnesia, as if nothing happened before yesterday. This summer holiday - what do they call it? This Parliament - what does it do? July 1 was once Canada Day (in prehistoric times Dominion Day) and this was a national celebration.

There is no “national” anymore because there is no nation, at least not as we knew it. In 2020, Canada is a country in little more than name. For many who have come here, Canada is a country of convenience. It offers security and anonymity and asks for conformity and equanimity.

People take rooms in the Grand Hotel, as novelist Yann Martel once put it, with little knowledge of - or attachement to - the place itself. In a rootless world of shifting loyalty and no fixed address, Canada is just another comfort station on the road to somewhere else. As author George Jonas put it, “Canada is a railway station in which passengers share “a destination but no destiny.”

(Source: Canada in 2020: Twenty leading voices imagine Canada’s future. 2008 The Dominion Institute. ISBN: 978-1-55470-065-3)


This Week’s Little Bit of Leadership Theory

The Mission Marsh evolved because people - leaders - made decisions which they believed to be right at the time. City Fathers chose to build roads and supply transit, later to close the park, then to relocate the landfill, and most recently...to lease the land to the Conservation Authority...

Canada in 2020 will be the result of the decisions that YOU make as a leader - decisions which you believe to be right at this time. Now.

You can either sit back in apathy (only 15% of the under 30 crowd votes, and they hold the balance of power in Canada!) or you can make a difference that makes a difference.

“Any living thing will change only if it sees change as a means of preserving itself.”

Creating CHANGE in COMMUNITY requires a SHIFT in your selection of data - what do you pay attention to? Leaders use the “lens of self”.

Margaret Wheatley says:

“We, like all life, choose what to notice because of who we are. We use the process of self-reference. We are free to choose, but we choose on the basis of slef. The process is essential for all life and, if repressed or denied, the organism dies. Self-reference explains why any living system is motivated to change. It will change to stay the same.”

Question for You: What will Thunder Bay and Canada be like in 2020? Click on comments at www.xowhat.blogspot.com to voice your opinion!