Polytechnique Memorial

A short walk from the restaurant is the Polytechnique Memorial, and as one of the topics at lunch was the challenges faced by women in engineering and entrepreneurship, we decided it would be worthwhile and respectful to visit as this week will mark the 30th anniversary of the Montréal Massacre.

Bordering the park (on the left in the photo) is the office where I spent five years at the first startup I worked at in Montreal: Purelink Technologies. I started there when I was Camille's age. The walk gave me the occasion to share with my colleagues all the haunts and stories from that era.

If I'm to sum this up in the context of Startical, there is much to be learned from the past, both good and bad. As much as entrepreneurship encourages looking forward, it is healthy to pause from time to time and look back.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana

TechNoel

Answers to the question from Vaughn and Noor. Art with Eva...

Evolutionary Purpose

Will and I discussed finding the balance of progress and purpose in organisations (startups and otherwise) which reminded me of the book Reinventing Organizations by Frédéric Laloux which was recommended to me by one of my mentors. We found the clip above on YouTube (if you're not familiar with Laloux, it's a nice short summary of his work) and one element stood out for me: what he called Evolutionary Purpose . How I understand this concept is that the purpose (or soul) of an organisation evolves over time, rather than an individual or leadership team directing towards a specific outcome. It's very much in line with the sailboat analogy and the lunch discussion I had with the team. It is very reassuring to me that the people closest to me today all affirmed my feelings on leadership, and interesting that it often took very different paths/context for us to be able to truly connect on the subject.

Sniffles

Of course I pushed too hard and paid the price of feeling that scratchiness in my nose by mid-morning. At best I was gonna carry a mild cold through the holidays. At worst I'd be a write-off for an entire week (which happened to me right after Christmas in 2015). It's not difficult to realise that I pushed too hard. Despite being on Startical with its explicit guidelines , there was just way too much to get done before the holidays. Even my Startical posts for nearly the past week have been placeholders to fill in later. And now that's caught up to me and I'm starting sniffles. The challenge now is striking the optimal balance between preventative care and completing my commitments before Christmas: sending out personalised Owl-iday e-mails including the Owl-iday Special I had worked so hard to create. I think I'll err on the side of preventative care as I really don't want to wrap up Startical feeling sick and useless...

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