Our Turn

by Stewart, Kirstine;

  Not everyone agreed with me. When I toured the country talking to staffers, I also held town halls, along with the heads of comedy and drama, to ask viewers what they wanted to see on their public broadcaster. I brought my schedule of the new programs I’d lined up, and some in the audience were livid, particularly diehard CBC fans with a long-standing connection to the network. One evening on the east coast, a famous local actor stood up and said, “How dare you! You’re a public broadcaster and you’re doing reality TV?”

  “Okay,” I said, “is there a public broadcaster you think that we should look up to? Who should we be emulating?”

  “The BBC,” he replied.

  I reminded him that the BBC broadcast Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, Dancing with the Stars and Who Do You Think You Are?—all reality-TV programs. And, unlike the CBC, the BBC had chosen to run these popular shows without any need to generate ad revenue. (The BBC is funded by the sale of television licences, and has no need to supplement its government funding with commercials in order to survive.)

  That heated exchange was emblematic of the unrealistic expectations thrown at the CBC. But step by step, we renovated the creaky primetime schedule, adding popular shows like Being Erica, reinvesting in stalwarts like The Nature of Things and The National, and Wheel of Fortune (yes, we aired that show, too!) started to turn in CBC-TV’s favour.

  Then Deliver the Goods

  THERE ARE MOMENTS AS A LEADER when speed and decisiveness matter above all else. Being decisive endures as one of the critical attributes of any leader, especially when these days of big data present opportunities, and dilemmas, by the gigabyte. Decision-making has generally been synonymous with taking action, which may be why it’s traditionally considered a strength of male leaders, as in a “man of action.” Presumably, in the evolutionary scheme of things, bringing home the bison demanded instant decisions about fight or flight. For women, who excel at gathering knowledge, encouraging input and weighing options, speed is thought to be less of a strong suit, and there’s a cart of psychological baggage that comes with that concept. Making quick decisions increases the risk of making the wrong decision, and fear of risk and failure is notorious for keeping women in the workplace tethered to the status quo (another point I’ll be exploring later).

  But there’s also another dynamic at work, and it’s one of the more insidious forms of gender stereotyping in the workplace, whether you call it “the double-bind,” implicit bias or, as it was dubbed in a 2014 Catalyst paper, “damned or doomed.” All these terms describe the idea that a female leader compelled to make fast decisions can be caught in a no-win situation. If she doesn’t act fast, she is seen as too soft to lead; if she does, she’s viewed as unlikeable. Or, as Sylvia Ann Hewlett, co-director of the Women’s Leadership Program at Columbia Business School, describes it in her recent book, Executive Presence, women are regarded as ineffective if they “can’t make up their minds” and as cold-hearted bitches when they do. Women, Hewlett argues, should at least “appear to be decisive.” That suggests it’s better to make the wrong decision than no decision at all—in other words, go brave or go home. Speed is the key.

  I don’t disagree. But in my view, this is where the digital age can serve women well. Now more than ever, agility and decisiveness have to be core strengths of leadership, and when women have so many characteristics essential for leading successful teams, we have to trust the way in which women tend to make decisions. We are inclined to be information gatherers, to seek input and do our homework.

  There’s fascinating research, for instance, including a 2012 report from Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research, that finds women are less likely than men to buy shares in companies they know little about, regardless of whether analysts dub it a “hot stock.” And that cautious research-before-investing approach results in women trading less often than men—and losing less than men. The Barclays study found that women investors are more likely than men to make money in the market; a seminal 2001 report from behavioural economists at the University of California found women’s returns outpaced those of men by an average of 1.4 percent annually. Gathering information and input—a ton of it—in order to make informed decisions fast has never been simpler. Knowledge of all kinds is a click away, whether it’s you or the team that’s mining it.

  Some may consider this research-style approach cautious, or even overly cautious. Others would say it’s smart. And today technology gives us the tools to gather information deeper and faster than ever before. So those informed decisions can come quicker than ever before. A 2013 study from researchers at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business surveyed six hundred board directors and found that how women make decisions makes them better corporate leaders. Companies with women on their boards are well known to outperform those who don’t have female members, and the DeGroote paper found that women’s collaborative, information-intensive approach is more likely to result in sound decisions—even if they are those that rock the boat. So when it comes to swift decisions, women need to be courageous, take a moment to draw upon all that they’ve learned, heard and seen, and then move forward.

  After the months I’d spent in conversation with people at the CBC, for example, what I had to do next was show them we could deliver. Nothing does more to galvanize a team than positive results. Which is why I couldn’t afford to wait until my second season on the job to demonstrate that success was possible. The network needed an almost instant hit to quiet the naysayers and lift the gloom. They had to see that we had the goods to create a smart hit—and all I had to do was my job, which was to exercise my influence to make that happen, starting with spreading the word.

  In the not too distant past, one of the tried-and-true ways to let people know about a new program was to promote it during peak hours, and preferably during a show with a massive audience. At the time, the only show that captured a million viewers on a weekly basis was Hockey Night in Canada, an American hockey blogger once dubbed this country’s crack cocaine. That made it a powerful vehicle to draw attention to other shows and everybody at the network vied for its promo spots—including me, the boss. I saw it as the perfect launching pad for Little Mosque on the Prairie, but reaction from our sports department was less than warm. They weren’t in favour of donating valuable airtime to promo a show that they thought would never attract the same kind of audience that tuned in to hockey on a Saturday night. Hockey dudes aren’t going to watch a show like Little Mosque, they told me. But hockey wasn’t just for the guys, I said, it was for families—families watch hockey and they’ll watch Little Mosque. Sure, it was a risk, but as I told the sports department, sparing the new show a couple of promos wouldn’t kill them.

  The Little Mosque premiere was scheduled for a Tuesday night in January, and we pulled out all the stops to stoke interest in advance with an extensive promo campaign. This included handing out Christmas cookies at malls, gingerbread women dressed in hijabs. It was, after all, a comedy. (I did turn down the marketing pitch to fly an ultralight plane around the CN Tower trailing a promo written in Arabic: um, what were they thinking?) The show would follow the Rick Mercer Report, which claimed a weekly audience share of close to a million. I asked if Rick, the biggest star on CBC’s primetime schedule, would do a personal throw to the show during his sign-off that night, and he agreed. The National also aired a piece, “Will LMOP save the CBC?” The little show with the strange title also brought CNN, Fox News and a whack of other media calling to hear more. On the day it debuted, the BBC carried an online story on Little Mosque that became the most downloaded article on its website. No pressure …

  The day after Little Mosque’s first episode aired, I was sitting in a boardroom with a bunch of finance types reviewing budgets when the person in charge of scheduling sent me a message. The daily ratings report card had just come in and her one line of text read “218 OMG.” I was bewildered. After all that effort, only 218,000 people had watched? But then I looked at the message again. Was i
t actually saying 218,000 or did it mean 2.2 million? I pushed back from the table, opened the boardroom door and down the hall I heard screaming. Of the most glorious kind. They were celebrating. It was 2.2 million. We’d never seen any number like that, and the record stands today.

  People were beyond happy. They felt exhilarated and exonerated. We had a bona fide hit so big that, ironically, the guys from hockey called to ask me for a promo spot for Hockey Night in Canada on Little Mosque for the following week. (When it aired in its regular Wednesday time slot, the same premiere episode garnered another 1.7 million viewers.) I suggested we run a huge ad to announce that the show was, officially, “Canada’s biggest hit.” The staff was hesitant, unaccustomed to the idea of positive attention—and uncomfortable with vying for it. “Ooooh, we don’t know if we should say that …” they told me. But I coaxed them to go along with it, to take a bow and be proud of their great work: it was theirs—ours—to enjoy.

  The feeling of triumph buoyed the building, lifting the pressure of gloom and pessimism. I sent Peter Mansbridge a cheeky note asking whether The National wanted to do a follow-up to “Will LMOP save the CBC?” I felt joy, not simply because of the success, but because people had seen that their success was possible. To me, it was a victory that took us much closer to the goal we were aiming for. Who doesn’t feel better about themselves and their organization, more confident, more ambitious, when they know their team can hit it out of the park?

  As it turned out, that January signalled the start of a veritable hit parade for the CBC. It’s not that all ratings wowed as soon as the shows were launched, as Little Mosque’s did. But many shows that debuted on CBC-TV in my early years went on to earn loyal followings, such as The Hour and Dragon’s Den (now in its tenth season, having turned the word “dragon” into a national synonym for venture capitalist), Republic of Doyle and Heartland, which in 2015 became the longest-running one-hour scripted drama in the history of Canadian television.

  I wasn’t any genius: change had to happen at the CBC one way or another. The people I led had everything to do with fulfilling what I saw as the urgent need to connect with Canadian viewers. The field trip to the suburbs had evolved. We developed direct and effective methods to tap into the desires of audiences. During the 2012–13 NHL lockout, for example, we relied on an online poll of audiences to find out what famous hockey matchups they’d like to see replayed and their answers determined which games we broadcast. We also made it a point to reach out to new Canadians through focus groups, surveys and interviews, which resulted in us making the move to broadcast Hockey Night in Canada in Punjabi. These were initiatives that not only spoke to new successes, and new ways to explore what viewers wanted, but also continued to stoke the spirits of people within the CBC, proving to them that change was possible. I’d drawn on my experience to make that happen, but it also took a certain courage and confidence to ignore the boundaries that others had set. That courage and confidence, I believe, is something that all leaders, but women in particular, have to be able to tap if they are going to succeed.

  When I took the stage in 2007 to offer a look at our lineup for the following season, I threw out the old presentation format. The CBC’s ratings were the highest they’d been in five years and we had nine new homegrown shows to unveil. Instead of plodding methodically through the primetime schedule hour by hour, we created our own live variety show, with music, comedy, video clips from the programs to come, live interviews with cast members and a host of CBC talent. We impressed the ad buyers. Our shows wowed our guests. In that moment, it was a celebration of our hard-won success as a team, however fleeting that turned out to be.

  [ III ]

  What Can Happen if You Don’t Follow Your Dream

  MY FATHER WAS BORN in a town in central Scotland. It was a small place, famous for a boarding school where generations of wealthy English families had sent their sons to be educated, but not just the wealthy made the cut. A bequest had endowed a scholarship so that the town’s brightest boy could attend the school regardless of his family income. In the late 1940s, my father was that boy. His smarts earned him entry to the academy, where, it so happened, his mother, my grandmother, was also the school cleaner. I’ve often imagined how my dad felt in those class-obsessed days of his adolescence, trying to fit in with the upper-crust lads while his mother cleaned up after them.

  At a time when all graduates went into service, my father joined the army. At a military base in England, he met my mother at a dance. They married at nineteen and twenty-one and within a year they were on a ship to Canada, hungry to carve out a better life. My father took a clerking job at a mining company and worked his way up to become head of its exploration division in Latin America.

  My mother worked full-time as a draftsperson until she had children. But even after my sister and I were born, she found ways to turn her natural talent as an artist into extra income. Art was in her blood. Her father was a gifted painter who produced a notable portrait of Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the British baron who founded the Boy Scouts Association (my granddad was one of the original six Boy Scouts). Yet neither my grandfather, a scientist by profession, nor my mother, would have regarded art as a way to make a living. My mother used her artistic talents to make pocket money at craft shows, setting up a booth where she sold beautiful hand-knit sweaters that featured impressionist landscapes rendered in angora, silk and cashmere. In the corner of her booth, I knit, too, well enough that I eventually knit for people on commission, making sweaters and baby clothes.

  I was always drawn to the arts—design, literature and music. All through school I played the flute, saxophone, oboe and clarinet. At the University of Toronto, I earned a coveted spot in the creative writing class of Josef Skvorecky. But I wanted to marry my talents with something concrete—a “real” job. I mixed courses in finance and other subjects in with my English lit classes. It’s been a mantra of the Baby Boomers and the generations who followed that you should follow your dreams. But in my family, as with many immigrant households, making a good living was the dream that mattered most.

  So I decided to go into publishing. Apart from my love of reading, I had no burning desire to actually be a publisher, but I thought the options of an English lit grad were limited, and teaching was not for me. In publishing I could earn a salary in a job that was at least related to creative writing. But when fate threw me into the television industry, I discovered that I could learn to love the job I’d stumbled into.

  Down with the Five-Year Plan

  THAT OPENNESS TO NEW OPPORTUNITIES, however unpredictable or unexpected, has been a major element of my success. When people, usually women, ask about my professional achievements, I can honestly say they have had more to do with taking chances than setting a career goal. I never set out to navigate a route to the top tier of any organization or corporation. To me, the most exciting career paths are those that unfold in unexpected ways. I am anti five-year-plan because in my experience the best things do not flow from making a plan and sticking to it. The key is to believe that you have what it takes not only to meet the challenges you find along the way, but to be open to what you learn on that journey. If you lock yourself into a single dream job you’re desperate to attain, you may close yourself off from something even grander.

  There’s a growing recognition that following one’s dreams or passions is no guarantee of success or happiness. Author Cal Newport, a computer scientist at Georgetown University, calls it the “passion trap” and suggests that passion may in fact be the root of widespread workplace unhappiness. In his recent book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Newport argues that if people only seek out work they love, they are bound to become disillusioned when they fail to love the work they do and essentially find their dreams unfulfilled. The passion trap prevents people from pursuing opportunities that don’t match their preconceived dreams.

  As technology rapidly reshapes the global economy, relying on your dreams to guide your worklife could ho
ld you back from what can make you truly happy. Traditional industries are being transformed (or failing) and traditional jobs are morphing and vanishing too. Today’s list of dream jobs simply doesn’t include the many possibilities for work that tomorrow is bound to bring. The US Department of Education, for instance, estimates that 60 percent of all new jobs created over the next two decades will require skills that only 20 percent of the current workforce possesses. The smart approach may be to unhook your ambitions from a particular plan because those plans are informed by the world of today where, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for many traditional vocations is rapidly shrinking. For example, metal and plastic machine workers are increasingly not needed as manufacturing becomes more automated; so, too, mainstream journalists, whose numbers are diminishing along with traditional print outlets; travel agents who find it hard to compete with DIY travel sites; postal workers, as people write fewer letters; and so on. At the same time, new occupations are emerging in the knowledge economy that no one ever dreamed of at those old-school career fairs, jobs like directors of community engagement, brand strategists, chief experience officers. What’s hopeful about this from a gender perspective is that none of these titles have a traditional gender. Say “doctor,” “lawyer,” or “taxman” and people still tend to picture, well, a man. But if you think “industrial-organizational psychologist,” “genetic counsellor,” or “information security analyst”—all occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts will grow robustly over the next decade—likely no gender comes to mind. Which is why today, for women, and men, too, keeping your mind open to the widest range of opportunities will reduce the chances you’ll find yourself boxed in.