Patriot Hearts (15 page)

I was not about to allow the vision for the project, or our mission and values, to be overpowered by a strong lineup of assertive individuals. That is why it was so important to embed these ideals as deeply into the organization as possible and to constantly reaffirm them. As a group, we decided that the vision, mission and values would always be our moral compass, the thing that we would use to strengthen ourselves when we were tested or feeling lost. And we agreed that no individual would be allowed to join the company if we felt that person couldn’t live our culture.

Our vision for the 2010 Winter Games had always been that they would be Canada’s Games—even during the bid phase. We recommitted to it when we became an organizing committee. Our mission was to touch the soul of the country, get inside its heart. After the Summer Games in Beijing, many people asked me how we were ever going to top that. My answer was easy: that’s not what we were trying to do. We were not looking to provide a spectacle; we were looking for something that was deeply moving, that would leave behind an emotional legacy for the country. If people didn’t care deeply about these Games, our legacy wouldn’t last a weekend.

Establishing the values that would guide our organization was serious but invigorating. We wanted principles that would allow us to build a consistent code inside the company, and provide us with a yardstick against which we could measure potential partners. If we felt Company A didn’t share our values, we would leave money on the table and walk away. Our values would be so ingrained that we would know instantly if something was off with a potential business partner.

Teamwork was our number one value but not something we were particularly good at in the beginning. Coming out of the bid phase, we were a bit arrogant and self-satisfied. We didn’t immediately embrace new partners like Bell Canada and the Royal Bank when they came aboard. We had to grow a bit as an organization before we could see that we were at times standing in our own way to the detriment of the overall project. Every partner represented a teammate who could do something to help us succeed. So it was best we treat them like friends. Our mantra became “We all cross the finish line together.”

Trust was another of our values. If you were working outside my door, it was important that you knew I had faith and trust in you. We needed every employee to know and feel that it was up to them to make the Games great. Whatever their job we wanted them to feel it was the most important one in the company and that what they produced must be perfect. We tried to get people to look at their work and never be satisfied, never settle.

When we came home from Prague someone asked me to describe the culture of our organization. I said if you put a sign over the front doors it would read:
BEYOND HERE EVERY SINGLE THING MATTERS
. Excellence and creativity were our other values, for obvious reasons. Everything needed to be first-rate, and we were surely going to need non-traditional solutions to everyday problems. More than once we had to pull a rabbit out of an empty hat.

The last value was sustainability. One member of the board, Jim Godfrey, was adamant on this. He had allies in board member Judy Rogers and several members of the executive. I wasn’t so sure. I thought it was one of those politically correct words that didn’t have a clear meaning. Did it mean the greening of the Games? Cutting down fewer trees? A smaller this and a smaller that? What does
sustainability
really mean, I asked. From Jim came the answer I will never forget: “It means you do what’s right every time, period.” That principle couldn’t be any more evident than it was a few years later when we were involved in some construction in Whistler. At one point, our staff had to move dozens of frogs and tadpoles by hand to a location 40 metres upstream. They would do this, at great cost, on five different occasions during work on the men’s and women’s downhill runs.

That’s what was meant by doing the right thing. In front of the camera or behind it our behaviour needed always to be impeccable. No exceptions. Our reputation was the one asset we had that was priceless, so we needed to protect it at all costs. Lose it and we would lose ourselves.

DESPITE ALL THE
team building that we had done, life was far from smooth for us. The first few years in the life of an Olympic organizing committee are always challenging, but we had an additional problem that was making our job even harder: an underlying tension was building between the executive and the board of directors. We were like oil and water sometimes.

We felt that some of our board members were putting the needs and desires of the stakeholder group he or she represented ahead of those of the organizing committee and the Games. If we were going to succeed we needed everyone to be united and on the same page.

The other issue that had emerged was leaks, much like what had happened before my appointment as
CEO
was announced. Sensitive information we were providing to the board was getting out and sometimes appearing in the press. It was as unsettling as it was infuriating. We did not feel that the boardroom was a secure environment to discuss matters that had, on occasion, the potential to impact a company’s share price if made public.

I also felt there was far too much politics going on. We would make a presentation before the board and often come away feeling that we had not taken advantage of the considerable expertise in the room. On the contrary, we sometimes felt the information we were providing the board was being traded and used to our disadvantage by certain stakeholder groups, such as a city council or a government partner. There were just so many conflicts around that boardroom table. My feeling was that if the board’s modus operandi was to allow seven different stakeholder groups to fish for themselves we were going to be in big trouble. We wouldn’t be able to put on the Games we wanted to. Their job was to be a good team too and to help us be successful.

By early fall, I’d had enough. I was frustrated beyond words. We needed to change the dynamic in the boardroom and convince the directors they were supposed to be on our side—that was the only way it could work. My team needed to be better too. I had talked to Jack about this on many occasions, and he completely agreed. He knew we had a problem and that something had to be done—but that did not make dealing with it any easier.

In mid-October 2004, we were going to be announcing our first major sponsorship initiative and we’d come down to two bidders. The board was holding a retreat in Whistler before its October meeting and that is where we were making our presentation on the deal. Outnumbered though I would be, I thought that this might be the best time to speak to the board about our concerns. I began by telling the directors that I understood how difficult their job was—on the one hand, they were representing entities that were negotiating with
VANOC
; on the other, they were supposed to be looking out for the greater interests of the organizing committee. But, that said, we were all supposed to be playing for the same team. Unfortunately, I continued, my executive was worried about the sanctity of the boardroom. We felt that some directors couldn’t be trusted to keep the information we were giving them confidential; there had been too many leaks.

I had to give them examples of what was going on, which meant awkward innuendo and finger pointing. Some board members resented being told they weren’t trusted and said so. One director later called me borderline impudent. I told them that regardless of whether they felt the charge against them was warranted, the executive was having a hard time and morale was suffering. Although I acknowledged that the scattergun approach had annoyed the innocent members, at least now the healing could start.

(I knew I was taking a personal risk in being this direct. But I figured it was better than trying to solve the issue behind the scenes, working one director off against another. Still, there was a good chance I had offended a lot of people in that room, and depending on how it turned out I may or may not have a job after it was over.)

By the time I finished, the divide between the executive and the board was as wide as the Grand Canyon. A team? I don’t think so. Not even close.

Later on, Jack and I met in my hotel room. “My God, you’re unbelievable!” he said. Jack did not much like conflict so he couldn’t fathom how strident I was with the directors. It was a side of me he’d never seen before. But he still agreed something had to be said.

Members of the executive drove up from Vancouver that night to have dinner with the board. Everybody was polite and friendly, but there was an undercurrent of tension. No one was happy, least of all me. After dinner I had a separate meeting with my team and told them what had transpired earlier in the day. I warned them that the sponsorship presentation to the board the next day was going to be challenging, and we needed to perform at our best.

The meeting would have its noisy moments, but ultimately the board signed off on our proposal. We had received so much pushback on our recommendation that it did not feel much like a win for my team. Before leaving the room, I reminded the directors that this was a strictly confidential matter and that we would be advising the two companies of our decision as soon as we could meet them face to face. I figured that after my earlier conversation with the board, we didn’t need to worry about any more leaks.

Wrong again.

Dave Cobb and I drove to Vancouver right after the meeting. We hadn’t been in the car 15 minutes when my phone rang. It was a good friend who had been heading up what turned out to be the losing bid. “So,” he said, “I understand you’ve made a decision. You might have had the courtesy to let me know in advance, given our long-standing relationship.”

I felt an inch tall. A grenade went off in my head.

I couldn’t believe it. Someone on the board had struck again— even after my warning about leaks. I was furious. I had no choice but to deny that a decision had been made, but my friend knew beyond all doubt this wasn’t the case. When I got off the phone I called Jack and told him what had happened. We agreed that we would investigate fully and confront the board with this information as soon as we could.

I told the directors when we finally did meet that we had a pretty good idea who leaked the information and that as soon as we had it 100 per cent confirmed we would be reporting back to them. Mostly, I wanted to drive home that we were on top of what was going on and determined to root out those who were not working in our best interests. The strategy worked: this would be the last time such a breach occurred. The boardroom became airtight. Score a point for team building.

Our problems with the board didn’t end—not entirely anyway. During the next couple of years, I picked up rumblings about a power move to replace Jack with someone else. There was a feeling among a minority of directors that he and I were too close and that Jack wasn’t objective enough about the job I was doing and the decisions the executive was making. There were some on the board who had the mistaken impression that Jack was meant to be chair only for a couple of years before stepping aside. That was never meant to be the case. Or if it was, it was news to me. For his part, Jack insisted on being reappointed as chair every year. He wanted to earn his spot the old-fashioned, democratic way, by a majority vote of the directors, and did not accept a lengthy term on the board like everyone else.

The executive was made aware of the chatter about replacing Jack, and as a group we made a decision to rally around his leadership. I certainly made it clear to the board, through back channels, that if Jack went I would be gone and some members of the executive team would probably leave too, which would lead to an incredibly messy and unstable situation at the organizing committee. To us Jack was a rock, a giant.

Luckily, that disaster never came to pass.