What Kind of Leadership is Needed to Meet Alberta's Aspirations

I am thinking about the next stage coming in the development and growth of the Alberta Party and Alberta the province.  While there are many constituency organizations forming, new members joining and people coming out to learn more because they are curious about the Alberta Party, the next big thing is the leadership of this progressive political movement.  That is about to start getting going in the new year.

It caused me to think about the kind of leadership we need in a 21st century society and economy.  I had breakfast last week with an academic friend from Ontario who specializes in leadership and found out her most recent thinking.  Alberta has a great potential but we are not even close to realizing it with all the blessings and benefits we have.  One major reason for such under performance is the kind of political leaders we select.  We can't blame the leaders for this alone, after all we select and elect them as citizens and once the are chosen we belittle and bemoan them relentlessly instead of supporting them and making them clearly accountable.  That attitude of citizens has to change completely if we are going to improve the quality, character, scope and capacity of our political leaders.

I am involved with a group called Leadership Edmonton that has a counterpart called Leadership Calgary that takes a more adaptive holistic and systems approach to leadership training and development.  I think the kind of political leadership we need now is not the charismatic, or the business icon or the celebrity models.  They are simply not suited to the challenges we face.  To get a sense of what qualities, capacities and perspectives I will be looking for in the leader of the Alberta Party - and for any political party or other areas where leadership is critical is captured in the 10 minute video done by Leadership Calgary.  I have also added the short video by Leadership Edmonton that will give you further perspective on what pioneering leadership we need these days to go forward...not left or right.

The kind of leaders we need now have foresight and wide sight, can integrate ideas, be honest, accountable and transparent, be fiscally responsible and accept the duties and obligations of stewardship in many aspects of being human and our deep co-dependent relationship with nature and our natural capital.

As you rush to get the work done before Christmas, this 10 minutes of video will be an intriguing cultural creative break that will be worth your time.  It will raise your consciousness about leadership. It will focus your attention on what we need in competent skilled leaders.  I hope is will trigger your imagination and give you a meaningful framework to consider your choices for the leader of the Alberta Party in the next few months.

I hope it will assists you as you contemplate the strengths, opportunities, threats and barriers we will need in 21st century political leadership.  We need to look beyond the old rush to the bottom ideas of the Alberta Advantage.  We need to look a wealth to move beyond conspicuous consumption and towards a greater well being and happiness.  We need leaders who can inspire and assist us to define and deliver a new sense of integrity as we get on with a cultural change towards achieving our Alberta Aspirations.  It is not enough to target Alberta as being the best in the world.  We need to aspire to being the best for the world.

Merry Christmas

I am just now getting into the Christmas spirit.  We will spend some time tonight with friends and family are our house partying as a way to start the "serious" celebration of the season.

To help you get into the spirit as we shop, bake, warp, bustle and hustle in preparation for Christmas, we will undoubtedly find ourselves in a shopping mall at some time between now and December 25.

I wish for a Merry Christmas and hope as you shop 'til you drop that you have an opportunity to experience this or something equally as endearing or whimsical to help you enjoy this great holiday time.

Enjoy and - turn up your speakers:

 

Creativity as a Key to High Performance Public Education

This link is to a comment by my friend and some-times mentor, Senator Tom Banks.  It is an insightful comment that arts education is core to competence - not a frill.  Senator Banks frames the role of the arts in a high performance public education system very well.  The need for the arts and creativity is especially true as we move through the Information Age into the Conceptual Age.

We need a critically-thinking engaged citizenship that is concurrently global and local in perspective and that means culture matters, especially as part of our public education system.  Budget pressures and restraints, standardized testings of narrow and shallow education outcomes plus market driven models  creating private competition for public education has driven creativity and arts out of the systems.

Save Our Fine Arts (SOFA - follow them on Twitter and track them at #sofab) is a citizen's based group focused on restoring and restating arts education as core to curriculum in our public education in Alberta. This is lead by a group of citizens with energy and enthusiasm and the leadership of Bill Campbell

Alberta's public education system is one a recognized high performance system all around the world.  But like any local prophet, it is too often taken for granted.  The seeds of our failure are often planted in the times of our success because we rest on laurels.  I sometimes fear for this in Alberta's public education system.

There are however some significant inspiring actions and ideas coming out of Minister Dave Hancock's transformation initiative "Inspiring Education."  There is lots of meat in that effort but it is not gong to achieve its potential as a top down authority driven command and control government program.  It is going to be successful if it comes from the community, citizens, employers, teachers, parents, and especially students.

SOFA is a perfect example of this kind of community based efforts to help advance the transformation of public education for a 21st century reality.  Another citizen's based group that is setting out to help transform public education is Creative Alberta lead by Dr. Haley Simons.  She has been organizing and conceptualizing abouts arts in education and looking at positioning our province as a center of creativity and innovation.  She is getting us linked to other high performance communities and regions around the world who are on the same journey.

Please visit SOFA and join them in their quest.  Keep tracking them and #creativealberta on Twitter and share the information and insights with you friends.  Our province is positioned to move beyond the Alberta Advantage and into the Alberta Aspiration.  It is no longer game of pushing  a society of consumptive competition with a slogan of being the best in the world.  Success for the next Alberta narrative has to inspire our aspirations to be the best for the world.  We are up to that goal and I think it is an idea who's time has come...let me know your thoughts on what we can do to be the best for the world given all our blessings and benefits.

Interesting Speculation on Seat Projections in Alberta

The norm in politics is a What If World for the most part.  Politics is hardly a science but it lends itself to analysis.  This is the most "fun" when applied to the political fortunes of the various parties and players. We have an great example of just such a What-If scenario done by Duncan at Albertavote.ca .

This analysis is speculation and based on the 2008 election results and the findings of the recent Environics poll.  That poll  put the PCs and the Wildrose Alliance in a statistical dead heat for overall voter support.  However, as Duncan points out, "all politics are local" so how does this support translate into seats in the various
constituencies?  Here aggregates and averages become almost meaningless.

What a critical thinking must also appreciate in such an analysis is it is entirely hypothetical since voter intentions are pretty much meaningless between elections.  Those who suffer in such polls say the only poll that counts is the one on election day.  That is mostly true but humans are strange creatures and we get persuaded by the influence of others, conventional wisdom and we love to hear and make up stories.  These between election polls feed those curious aspects of our species.

These polls create a sense of "perceived reality" that is influential to some degree or more.  Narratives get told, impressions get formed and new "truths" emerge from those inputs as they impact on our values and form our beliefs.  Is is the attempt of the political players to frame the narratives, control the impressions and speak the new "truths"is where the spin doctors come in.  Give Graham Thomson a read to see how that works.

All this leads me to think we need more critical thinking citizens with some serious media literacy skills and a capacity to cut through the spin and get a sense of what is really happening in the hearts and minds of people when the see these polls.

I have tried to put some of my sense of the realism into my analysis of the Environics poll implications here and here.  Hope you find all this information helpful in getting a better understanding of the facts and their implications - but understand it is all hypothetical.  You are reading poetry that needs interpretation, not a recipe that will provide you with a predetermined result.

Haven't We Had Enough of Harper Yet?

Here is a great summary blog post on the latest and greatest governance shortcoming and political manipulations of our Past-His-Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Imagine There's No Harper

It's Easy If You Try

Impolitical