One Red Hot Country Mama!

I have been a bit distracted lately, with the intensity of the motherhood experience, keeping my business going and enjoying life as a red hot country mama in Port Hope. But, so much bigger than my life… there are a lot of changes going on in my country, and I worry.

The G20 Experience in Toronto – With mass arrests and human rights violations, this was a dark day for Canada. Yes there are inquiries, but the Bill Blair, Chief of Police is still there, and though a few individuals have been taken to task, no one is holding any of the politicians responsible.

Rob Ford Becoming Mayor of Toronto – Conservative Rob Ford  got elected on a platform of fighting the “war on the car”. That’s right, he convinced the voters of Toronto that the problem was not the fact that there are too many cars on the road, and we should look at why, but instead that there is some mysterious “war on the car”. This saddens me, since we have an opportunity to increase transit, and with his mishaps with MetroLinks mean that probably there will be no forward movement on transit in the next 3 years of his term. He has recently distinguished himself as the first mayor in decades not to march in the pride parade. I lived in Toronto for 10 years (and may be going back next year), and I cannot believe that the people of this diverse cultural capitol chose this guy to lead them.

Conservative Stephen Harper Getting a Majority – I noticed that even the political pundits are rolling their eyes. When an new scandal came up recently with him re-appointing an ex-senator to the senate, who had left to campaign and failed, one of the pundits on Evan Soloman’s Power and Politics said “well, you elected them after outlandish scandal after outlandish scandal, what do you expect?” Yes, perhaps this has more to do with the implosion of the Liberal Party than anything else, but I am saddened that this man represents me and my country on the world stage.

I don’t know why Canada has changed so much – especially when we are seeing a predicted Conservative win in Ontario as well… I think that these politicians are preying on the apathy of the voters. I think that, since I cannot believe that the average Canadian is aligned with these guys. Maybe everyone is just busy like I am doing the day-t0-day, and we are letting the wolves manage the henhouses.

I have always liked the saying: “Canada is not great, but it is good”. But, now with this awful collection of leaders with their backwards agendas, I am afraid we can no longer say that.

One thing that I have never been very good at is surviving workplace assholes. As a 10-year-plus project manager, I am pretty good at managing vendors, listening to them when there are real concerns, calling them on their shit when they aren’t. In my early career I saw other young PMs being too good friends with the vendors, to the point where they would be more on their sides than on the sides of their bosses. But, I have never seen it that way. Vendors can become friends in special cases, but any time there is money in the relationship, you have to be careful about whether or not that friendship is genuine.

So – vendors are no problem. I sometimes have difficulty with my bosses or clients, but usually I am a favourite. My real challenge is people who are my equal, usually women, who attack me. In my corporate life they were co-workers, in my client life they are usually indirect people within organizations that I deal with. I will tell my story here, keeping everything anonymous. Here are some challenges I have had in the past:

• Miss J: Miss J was a co-worker that I used to work with. I was not her direct boss, but I was a senior member of the team charged with guiding the newer staff. This was Miss J’s first job, and she made an amazing impression in the interview making everyone say “she is the one”. At first, we were all impressed with her work ethic and quality of jobs. After a while, she started to accuse me of doing strange things I did not do, such as telling her to work overtime. In each case, the things I said could have theoretically been construed as what she said, but they weren’t. Things were a bit tense with my boss at the time, so she sided with Miss J, leading me to resent both of them very much. Things escalated with her, and eventually I just kept myself in the protected shell of my cubical. Later, she started targeting my boss with the same behaviour with the HR department. If I was to do it again, I would have sided with my boss, and we could have repaired our relationship. But, stupidly, I sided with Miss J. She eventually got fired, and embarrassingly, my boss found e-mails where Miss J and I were making fun of her. I left the company, regretting the toll that this took – especially hurting my boss who was a nice woman.
• Madame K: Madame K was someone I worked with since I started my own business. By the time I met her, I had dealt with this situation a few times with different women. She joined the organization I was working with about 6 months after I did. The team was very excited since she had a unique set of technical skills that were really helpful to the organization. I was also interested, since I am always excited to meet cool, strong women. When we first met, my heart sunk, and my stomach started to feel sick. From the beginning, she was spouting off wrong facts about my field, with no knowledge. I did not speak up, since I did not want to embarrass her, but if I was to do it again, I would have likely said something. She got demoted from leading the project, and I took the leadership role. She would nit-pick everything that I did afterwards, copying everyone, which made me crazy. I tried to escalate the nit-picking, but the client’s philosophy was that emotions were childish, and the whole thing was. I think he saw me as as much of a contributor as she was. Eventually I left the client – Madame K is still there but in a further diminished role.
• Lady B: Lady B was a young, new person I worked with who was on a client site. She was beautiful, personable, positive and effective in her client-facing role. I helped her with various projects, and trained her on others. She and I eventually went out for coffees to talk about life, and when I had a birthday party with work friends, she was invited. Things started to get a bit hectic with this particular client, and I was ready to leave. The boss had information that he could only have gotten through the conversations with her, and used it against me even clawing back revenue. She also went behind my back and betrayed me in the worst way since I started my business. If I was to do it again, I would never have trusted Lady B and I would never have confided in her.

So – essentially, I think that since these things keep happening, there must be something that I bring to the table as well. In each situation I made mistakes for sure, but I think there must be some larger, umbrella-mistake I am making to be a target for these people. I was the target of “mean girl” behaviour from some family members growing up, so maybe it is Freud’s repetition compulsion – I have to keep repeating this situation until it is resolved. Or perhaps I was just unhappy for other reasons in the situations above, and was looking for excuses to leave. Or – maybe it is just me seeking chaos in m life, right when the storm has calmed a bit.

Some of it, I believe, is a really toxic dynamic of women in the workplace, but I don’t believe it happens to all women. So – I am going to try to work through it in my current situation, and journal it here, using the advice from various experts. I hope this can help others as well. Here is the background on my current situation:

Soccer Mom: Soccer Mom is on the management team of one of my current clients. She is well-respected in the organization, and has played a key role in building the business. She is determined and warm and really loves her kids, and was very congratulatory when my son was born in January. However, she keeps coming in and trying to manage my projects. She will manage on top of me, telling my vendors what to do and causing a lot of confusion. She will also source new vendors without my knowing, with a brief that does not make sense for the project. Unfortunately, she does not have the technical background or experience to be able to do this work, so it always ends up being a mess. I wish she would simply stick to what she knows and is good at, rather than encroaching on what I am doing.

So – rather than this turning into another situation that drives me crazy at the time, and leads to regret, I am going to try a few different things. First, I will follow Bob Sutton’s advice. He is the author of The No Asshole Rule and has a lot to say in his article: Latest Tips for Surviving Workplace Assholes. Here is my plan:

Limit Contact: Although it is hard to avoid her, I can minimize my contact. I have tried that in the past, and that has worked so I will continue.

Polite Confrontation: I will talk to her about the situation and see. She does not seem “crazy” so hopefully a polite confrontation will help her see how much this is bothering me and why.

Practice Indifference and Emotional Detachment: I think obsessing about it is not healthy for me, so I will work on not letting it bother me so much and focus on the positive things (my son/husband, projects in my work I am enjoying, friends, working in the garden etc) – perhaps this will make the confrontation easier as well.

Practice “Small Wins”: I will try to think of ways to practice small wins so she will leave me alone.

So – stay tuned for updates!

Come on Canadian women, get Stephen Harper out of office! He does not represent us, especially considering what he did to Helen Guergis.

This video was inspired by the women of Hamilton, who created the It’s Over Steve initiative:

Followers of this blog will know that for the past three years, I have been running my own marketing consulting business (at www.convertinnovations.com). During that time, I have had clients of all sizes, worked on interesting projects, and have tripled the business, then shrunk it down again. I have learned a lot of lessons in my years as an entrepreneur, and I would like to take the opportunity to share them:

• Not all entrepreneurs are these amazing inspirational people. Some people are entrepreneurs because they cannot get a regular job, or they can’t stick with one. I went into it with this idealized view of people who chose the independent route, not realizing that many are there because they have no other choice, and many are totally not inspirational at all. Also, a lot of entrepreneurs idolize large companies, rather than seeing small enterprises as the best.
• Employees will never care about your business as much as you do. No matter how good someone is in interviews or discussions about a job, they will never be as invested. I realized that it is much better to work with complimentary and equal people, rather than having a full-time employee.
• It is not impossible to do business with friends and family, but it can complicate the relationship. Although it is fun to work with friends at first, it can be challenging as well in terms of maintaining the friend-side of that relationship.
• As an entrepreneur, you have a lot of freedom, but you also have a lack of security. Even accounts that seem rock-solid for years can change with no warning. It is important to keep your eyes open at all times for new opportunities in case this happens.
• The vast majority of business owners in Canada are white men. If you are thinking of entrepreneurship as a way to change the status quo in terms of our established social hierarchy, it is not that easy.
• Finally, always get payment up-front with new clients! If they are too cheap to pay up-front, you never know if you will get payment later.

So – as you can probably gather, some of these lessons were difficult, YET, I still want to be an entrepreneur. Especially now that my son is born, being a work-from-home person gives me opportunity to be “out there” doing cool stuff, but also, I have time to be with my son as much as possible.

For my next steps, I think I will continue consulting, but mix in other opportunities, such as teaching, developing iPad apps and building a non-profit or a think tank. I want to give back to the world more, and that what is there now is still not enough. Onward we go!

As you may know, I am now living in a town an hour outside of Toronto called Port Hope. It is a beautiful little town, and we live in an antique house on the water. But, since Matt has a job in the city, and the commute is crazy, we are going to have to eventually move back to a city of some sort. On the short list right now is Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. If you can think of a word for each city, I would say: Toronto: Work Vancouver: Outdoors Ottawa: Community After 10 years in Toronto, I found it was a really great place for career, but it is not as good for community. Ottawa is community since it is the kind of place where people still know their neighbours, and you can meet people you know whenever you go downtown, and Vancouver is more about the stuff that you do on the weekends. So – which one will we choose? We don’t know. The move is in the five-year plan, so we will see!