The elevator that lifts you up can also bring you back down!

Here we are approaching year's end, and rather inevitably, during some quieter moments in and around the various feasts and festivities, one finds oneself taking stock of life and career and one's level of success, and how lucky/unlucky one feels about it all. Of course, the only real viewpoint is how lucky we all are, compared to so many, even if it's human nature to find something to gripe about - but sticking with the positive is always going to take us further in the end. 

As nauseating as all the currently-in-vogue "paying it forward" and "teachable moment" armchair (make that chaise longue!) psychology psychobabble on the TV is, there is a lesson in there - somewhere - you just have to dig it out from within the often self-serving "How great I am to be sharing my wealth-wisdom-winning ways with y'all" self-promotion. Generally speaking, the celebrities or "winners" who do it on the quiet are the ones whose motives I trust (the most), while anyone having a bright light shone on them in primetime for all they do for others, apparently out of the blue, well ....you know. 

But as much as it gets people all watery-eyed and weak at the knees to see some rich, famous celebrity helping others "below" them, those very same people often go into work with a stellar focus on only helping themselves and their own career, even at the expense of others and being willing to trample over those "below" them as they see fit or deem necessary. There's an apparent disconnect here, as if somehow it's okay for a celebrity to care for those beneath them or thank the paying public who got them there, because they have made it and are untouchable now, so of course they can afford to give something back!

I don't think that's the point, at all. Each of us is (or can be) our very own (minor) celebrity; one who has made it to a large extent, and who probably does owe some people for where one climbed to today (irrespective of current job title or remuneration level), and it's not because one is not all the way there yet that one should exhibit no gratitude. Yes, it can be a dog-eat-dog world in the typical office or workplace, but it's not because others behave like dogs that you have to do the same to survive. On the contrary, the exact opposite stance may even help you stand out more and rise above the incessant, meaningless barking. 

But it is deemed somewhat acceptable to scratch and scrap one's way up the ladder, to fight to get to the top, and then one is expected to suddenly undergo a personality transformation and begin to go all warm and cuddly with a new-found desire to "give back" to others? This is extremely unlikely to happen in the corporate world. Those who trample people on the way up, are those who are gonna be an even bigger pain in the ass, once there. Conversely, those who got there the right way  (based on actual merit)  and the kind way (some would argue that's just a pipe dream) are much more likely to remain that way, once they achieve their success. 

One does hear the argument that celebrity X or executive Y did not get to  where they are today by being Mr. or Mrs. Niceguy, so one must stay laser-focused and ruthless on the way up, in order to get there, and then of course it's easier to breathe and think of others once you have reached your own individual goals. This is all fine and dandy, but it will take you years to climb that ladder, and you will have passed through the working lives of many, many others by then; frankly, if you are known as a total b**ch (or worse!) after 5-10 years of ladder-climbing, there will be almost nothing you can do to change that perception around town, later. It sort of gets written in metaphorical stone on your real career headstone, and for some it later becomes the tagline on their career gravestone, as they tumble back down the big game of snakes and ladders that is business and life. Or even the business of life!

The cool quote from actor Kevin Spacey (yeah, that other Kevin! ;) caught my eye recently and it works well in relation to today's topic, both in terms of comparison and contrast to what is being discussed. Yes, it is an extremely endearing thought and gesture to send the elevator back down, of course! However, at the same time, unlike ourselves,  having reached his level of success and wealth, it is unlikely that he will ever need to use that elevator down again. But that is almost never the case for the typical individual in the business world, where "fame" and power can be much more transient in nature. 

Thus in our case, and with the way the economic crisis impacted the business world after 2008, it is not uncommon to find ourselves back inside that elevator once more, going down, and you can bet that the doors will open on every single floor between the top and the ground floor, with a mass of instantly recognisable faces crowding the doors to have a good, long look at you on your journey down. It is not likely to be a pain-free process, and the level (or lack) of vitriol mixed with pure pleasure on those faces will be a direct measure of how you rode the elevator up in the first place!

Depending on just how high you may have risen, it could well be one extremely lengthy metaphorical descent back down to where you began your journey - on the ground floor, looking for a job. The metaphorical journey down may be a lengthy one, but being called into human resources and walking out with a box full of your personal effects can be over in what feels like a few seconds, simultaneously hitting the ground floor with as heavy a thump as the metaphorical elevator hitting the ground beside you. Yes, that's you inside that elevator, walking out on the ground floor in a state of total shock!

I personally don't believe there is anything to be gained by scratching your way up, and you actually get more out of people by encouraging them to help you get the most out of your tasks, while in turn helping them do so in return. One climbs based on merit and talent, not due to being loudest, scratchiest, or the type who spends more time doing politics than doing their job; the latter type always gets theirs in the end anyway, when people realize that they don't actually have the skills necessary to do the bloody job. 

It costs little to be a little more giving and a lot less selfish by collaborating with colleagues rather than being in endless competition for attention and promotion with them, and it can pay huge dividends in terms of what people really think about you, and will be willing to say about you, when your name comes up in both everyday conversation and in terms of being a promotion candidate. While again, there are those who would say nice guys/gals finish last, I prefer to think of it in terms of nice guys being finished (i.e. out of a job) last. 

As much as I admire Kevin Spacey's quote, I might just add-in that on the way up, it's not a bad idea to hold the doors open a little longer on each floor to allow a few others to jump in with you, or simply to take a few minutes to chat with the people that you meet on the ride up - it can make a massive difference not only to the likelihood of having to take that elevator down again, but also to how people react to that coming back down to ground - and a little extra cushion can go a long way on a darker day! 

Resolving to avoid the trap of end-of-year resolutions!

One of the biggest mysteries known to mankind is where does December go? One second we are in late November beginning to come up with ideas for presents for loved ones, then it's back to business, last minute end-of-year deadlines and the usual round of office parties and social events. We wake up and it's suddenly December 20th, with everything else to be done in two or three days, as the pressure gauge begins to hit the red zone. 

It's totally imaginary, of course, but we always seem to lose a month in December each year, just when we probably need some extra time the most, but there are only 24 hours in a day and there's nothing much we can do about that. In any case, I discussed the "Christmas craziness" at work in last week's post, so naturally this time we come to that other perennial of the festive season and end of year - resolutions for the next 12 months!

I have never, ever been a fan of New Year's Eve, even when younger. There's something I find actually counter-productive about it, and I think it's due to all the fuss that's made over it and how one is expected to party like it's 1999, and put aside any/all of the resolutions that one felt better for having made earlier. People resolve, then go nuts, then wake shell shocked in no fit condition to resolve anything, with the Christmas dream over and the cold, hard reality of January 1st staring them in the face. The day is built up so much, that just about any day coming after it simply has to feel like a downer, right?

It seems we don't learn from our mistakes, and so we continue to make futile resolutions that are so easy to make on December 30th or 31st, but so difficult to stick to , even by January 3rd or 4th! Clearly, it's the easiest thing in the world to proclaim one will stop smoking in 2015, then head out to a massive party with extra smokes in store to make up for all the smokes one will miss next year, and suddenly mere days into the new year, one is, well, smoking again - or smoking still, may be the more accurate way of putting it. 

I don't know why us humanoids insist on setting overly ambitious goals for ourselves, when it's been proven that it doesn't work, instead of setting more reasonable and attainable goals and sticking to them. I mean, how often do you hear someone exclaim that they are gonna quit smoking, in comparison to how frequently you hear someone state that they are going to smoke less? If one could do something less for a few years in a row, who knows, it might be more easily dropped - permanently - rather than failing repeatedly at the cold turkey approach. 

Putting aside bad habits in our personal lives, I think we can benefit from a similar approach in the workplace. Why resolve to make massive changes in particular aspects of our work performance which tend to slip away frighteningly quickly upon facing the horrors of the office in the first week of January? It would be much more productive to examine honestly what things we were good at and did well at, and commit to focusing on doing more of that, and correspondingly facing our weaknesses and commit to them manifesting less in our day at the office. If we set the impossible goal of pleasing everyone all of the time, then surely we are destined to fail. Conversely, if we are determined to please more people than we did last year, then that may well become reality. 

The whole new year resolution and new year party thing seems to be a case of putting off till tomorrow what can be done today, and it's always better to do it today. One doesn't need to wait till December 31st each year to try to improve ourselves; if we mean it, it can be started today, even if today is in summer of autumn. The sooner we begin to act on having thought it or even said it, the more chance there is that we do mean it and will execute it, thus increasing our chances of actually succeeding at it!

There is an added advantage to taking a more ongoing project management-style approach to our resolutions and will power - one doesn't awaken at  midday on January 1st feeling like one did die in 1999, with all sorts of added pressure on one's shoulders from what one promised the wife or husband, kids, friends and colleagues just the day before! Now that surely makes January 1st a much less depressing affair, converting it into a day that requires a lot less resolve and one filled with significantly more optimism and less regret from the night before.

Keep it real, keep the improvements realistic, and don't be overly hard on yourself for not (yet!) being the perfect you - this is my recipe for a healthy assessment of the past year and being primed to eagerly face the new year ahead. But luckily that's still two weeks ahead of us, and for now it's all about some serious R&R after a quite spectacular year. So on that note, this is NVNG signing off for 2014 - I will no doubt be back in touch in early 2015 - and until then, happy holidays!

How to make Christmas craziness (feel less like) work!

It's that time of year again, the one beloved by many and dreaded by others, but it's as inevitable as the first snow of winter - that would be the one that hit us hard this week in Montreal- and yes, we are talking about Christmas! There's nothing like Christmas to get everyone into a furious frenzy over end-of-year craziness at work, the manic madness of the last-minute shopping sprees and the political pressure of the office party with its microscope.

Most folks vocalise at some point or other during the year that it's just nuts and why do we put ourselves through it, and this year is going to be different, but then, boom, it's the festive season out of the blue once more, and into Santa's grinder we all go; out we come at the other end as frazzled, frizzled and fracked versions of our normal selves. The question is - why?!

Even though we find out way too soon that there's no Santa Claus, and it's all a myth, it seems we cling on to the need to have a big blowout at year's end even as adults. It might be a healthy way of sort of writing off a tough year, in a haze of shopping and partying, or it might just be a throwback to when responsibilities were non-existent and we didn't have a care in the world. Suddenly, activities that are totally taboo the rest of the year, like Monday night at the pub and Wednesday evening cocktail-fueled karaoke, become the norm and it's acceptable to show up at the office like you barely got three hours sleep - because you did!

So for a week or two each December, people get to stuff their faces like there's no tomorrow, drink enough to make them wake wishing there had been no tomorrow, and then repeat until the reality of the dreaded January 1st or 2nd comes-a-knocking. The highlight usually being of course, the annual office party, where, perhaps due to the fatigue from everything else that's going on, people are at their weakest and the drinks kick in even faster than usual. Cue the beahviour that the smartphone and camera-carrying voyeurs simply love, as they sip on their mineral water and ice. 

It's all a bit silly, of course, but if we are trying to have a brief return to lighter days, then it seems that Christmas serves its purpose, but it can kinda get in the way of work. Thus on the one hand there is that end-of-year craziness and (often) imaginary deadlines at the office, then there are various office/networking parties to attend, then there's late night shopping, and then it's back to work to repeat it all again - increasingly the worse for wear. 

I am not a big believer in the end-of-year myth, and I am not talking about Santa Claus! It's the adult end-of-year myth. The fallacy that  I am referring to is that somewhat inexplicably, perhaps actually as a way of limiting the self-indulgence of the staff, after either a bad year or even a great year, suddenly everything must get done by December 22nd. Tell me whenever one week of extra work has changed things forever in a company and I will show you the eighth wonder of the world - and that would be me. But it's a habit most bosses find hard to kick - that last chance in the year to kick some butt, often because they are behind on their own targets. 

But at a time when people are already frazzled, extra pressure gets piled on, and the tension and tiredness in the workplace turns it into a real pressure cooker, which actually leads to a greater need to blow off the steam with unceremonious vigour at the free bar later in the day. I think both management and staff play a role in all of this, with the responsibility being shared to differing degrees depending on where you work. It takes two to tango, and only one to ruin the dance completely.

First off, if after what appeared to be a rather productive year (in the employees eyes) and a stressful degree of pressure is applied to meet "urgent" deadlines before the holidays, well, someone higher up should have been monitoring progress and performance earlier and addressed it. You are highly unlikely to be popular when you suddenly wake up in the first week of December, realising you are way behind, panicking, then transferring that panic onto the staff. This is just weak management - pure and simple. 

Ditto (in a related but less obvious way) for the staff. There's not much point in blissfully ignoring what goals you were set in your evaluation six months or a year ago, and then suddenly being forced to face them in early or mid-December. And it's totally naive to think that after a rather lacklustre year, if you are seen running around like a chicken with its head cut off, arms full of folders and fury, that the boss is gonna actually notice it and take it into account for your yearly bonus. He or she is probably too busy with the free champagne as well!

If we all take more responsibility for what we are meant to achieve each year, and this includes both ends of the workplace spectrum, management and staff, then guess what - we all get to actually enjoy the run-in to the holidays with no nonsense or cosmetically added pressure and stress piled onto our weakening shoulders. The idea being that we already are probably not at our productive best by mid-December when various distractions kick in, so take care of business the other 50 weeks of the year and then you can ease off on the gas a little for the last week or two at work. This is the way to acknowledge a good year by the team, and it may just do wonders for team spirit and morale that it's the boss kicking staff out of cubicles at 3pm and letting them do some early shopping before the pub at 6pm. 

Who knows, it may even be a way to actually look forward to the approach to the holidays and the annual shutting down of business and professional life until the new year. Yes, yes, things are different if there is a multimillion dollar deal that needs closing, or a huge order that must go out, but this is the exception and not the norm at Christmas. Unless of course, you work for Canada Post or Amazon, in which case the holidays come the day after December 25th! :)

The new MUHC - putting the "super" into superhospital!

Like a teenage growth spurt, the construction project that we have all marveled at as we drove along the highway in recent years has materialised before our very eyes into a vision of considerable beauty - we are of course referring to the huge hospital complex known as MUHC (or CUSM in French!). I might vouchsafe that it is not only beautiful in terms of its concept, scope and ambition, but that it is as beautiful by design and makes one incredible impact visually, whether passing by on the 20 or up close and personal with it.

The latter was rather remarkably possible last Sunday when the Glen site was opened to the public and allowed us to get inside and dig deep into the heart of this beast of a building (as far as we were allowed, anyway!) and see what all the fuss was about. I can inform you that it didn't disappoint and actually made for both a very informative and fun day out, via the various tours that were on offer - these included tours of the Cedars Cancer Centre, the RI-MUHC, as well as a behind-the-scenes tour and a general tour.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

My guest and I (the specialty tours were sold out, and tickets were like gold dust on the big day!) had the luxury of having access to the tour of the new research institute (RI-MUHC), which will comprise some 500 senior researchers and 1,200 graduate students, postdocs and fellows all pursuing work that is designed to strengthen the "bench to bedside" ethos that is a fundamental of the new institute. As a scientist, there is nothing like seeing a brand new untouched suite of laboratories, one module of which is shown above, and all that shiny new big equipment adjacent - it's a bit like a chef seeing a brand new kitchen and itching to get working in it, but additionally it brings back memories of when I was actually doing the experiments at the bench myself! 

However, it's not all about science, and given that 1% of the reported $250M spent (of which around $65M went on ultramodern equipment) must furnish artistic installations in such buildings, well, dotted around the place, inside and out, you can see some rather unique pieces. These include "Prendre le pouls", a giant stethoscope sitting outside on the cafeteria terrace by Cooke-Sasseville, Linda Covit's "Havre", out front, and "Lustre", a stunning hung model of hemoglobin (made by Montreal artist Nicolas Baier) comprising some 4,500 pieces that have a huge presence in the atrium entrance to the RI-MUHC. 

  

                                   

Such pieces, along with the refreshing color schemes used in the various main sections of the hospital are a very nice touch and will lighten the mood in what surely will be some darker days that represent the reality of daily life in a major hospital. The giant 8 metre high stethoscope is particularly poignant in that the headset turned towards the hospital and the chestpiece directed out towards the population is meant to represent the doctor-patient relationship, and how important listening is in that regard. For sure on the day of the tour, that stethoscope must have heard the beating hearts of an eager and excited few thousand hearts that passed by it on the walkway into the building. 

As fun as the tour was, upon hitting the patient facilities one did realise the full gravity of what will be going on there once the doors are officially open, and patients from the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal Children's Hospital, Montreal Chest Institute and Shriner's Hospital (and more) all become residents in spring next year. There is a state-of-the-art emergency department, 14 operating rooms, 15 intervention centres and some 346 single-patient adult rooms (500 including children) that are designed to make the patient  as comfortable as possible.  

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The new operating rooms looked eerily empty but no doubt will soon be ready to be truly operational (sorry!), the single-patient en suite rooms were bright and cheery with natural light beaming in from seemingly every window, and the chic red signature of the clinical specimens lab gave a definite impression of serious business - not least by way of the totally 2015 pneumatic system that is set to deliver samples from emergency or operation rooms from afar with turnaround in many cases inside an hour! The pneumatic system was up-and-running in a Singapore hospital and apparently a team from MUHC went there to assess it and then bring it on board in Montreal.

All in all, it was a fascinating look inside a fascinating new superhospital for Montreal, and it surely crystallises for many what was originally only a concept, if not just a dream, and one seemingly so far away from becoming reality. But it's here, it's now, and by very early 2015, research begins at the brand new RI-MUHC and we are as delighted about that as anyone - maybe more actually, because some of the research projects in AmorChem's investment portfolio are about to be housed in that gorgeous new facility - and if that further inspires and facilitates translation of research from "bench to bedside" then we are all smiles about that!