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Seeking to grow leadership in the Kootenays
A Cranbrook author, negotiation expert and leadership consultant believes the Kootenays are ripe for the creation of the Kootenay Leadership Institute (KLI).
David B. Savage, President, of Savage Management Ltd., held a book reading at Lotus Books in 
Cranbrook March 31, to showcase Ready, Aim, Excel! The Expert Insights Weekly Guide to Personal and Professional Leadership.
However, the event was much more than Savage, one of 52 experts featured in the book, along with global leadership experts such as Marshall Goldsmith, Cathy Greenberg, Relly Nadler and Ken Blanchard, reading from the recently released book.
“We live in the most confusing climate of our era when leadership theories and methods are just not as effective as they used to be. These days many are finding it challenging to be effective in their varied and demanding leadership roles. New slants on old models aren’t cutting it anymore. Along with these challenges comes increased difficulty as we strive to form meaningful connections and communication in the midst of a technology-driven society,” Savage stated.
“We must face the reality that yesterday’s solutions won’t solve today’s problems. To be successful in reaching out, maintaining relationships, generating new business, and remaining competitive, we must identify a new approach.”
Savage met with 17 people from around Cranbrook and Kimberley who shared varying views on what leadership is and supported the vision of a Kootenay Leadership Institute.
Savage said after the book reading: “Seventeen great people working together towards the Kootenay Leadership Institute. We have a great beginning. There were a number of great moments today. One of the best for me was realizing that in our first meeting you met one another often for the first time and saw potential.”
Savage said he first seized on the idea of a Kootenay Leadership Institute about five years ago.
“I am tired of talking. It is time to say ‘let’s go.’”
With the world’s changing economic landscape, a new form of leadership and leaders are needed, especially in smaller centres where many professionals, entrepreneurs and business owners operate in a “sense of isolation. The sense it is the way it is in the Kootenays or we have to move away.”
A leadership institute would provide people with ways to connect, receive mentoring and education and share ideas to help each other grow and prosper, he said.
“My goal is to say in a year we have 200 members in the Kootenays. And in 10 years I would like us to be seen as equivalent of the Banff School of Management,” providing support for such organizations as College of the Rockies, Columbia Basin Trust, chambers of commerce and JCI.
“This is to say – on a new level let’s focus on leadership together.”
Savage said he would like to see Kootenay residents celebrating leadership, with an institute available to challenge and nurture leaders.
“We don’t have to be isolated as leaders. We can connect and challenge ourselves,” he said.
The way our society is currently structured, with Baby Boomers beginning to fade into the background that is the retirement years, there is going to be an influx of new leaders replacing the old, Savage noted.
“How do we support the ones who will replace them – to be better? Secondly, let’s address the issue of why our families generally cannot earn a living here. Why do most young people move away for 30 years? Let’s find ways to help them to stay. What if there is a 35-year-old woman with a university education working to build a business but sees a ton of roadblocks? What if there was a leadership institute that could mentor her?”
The book Ready, Aim, Excel!, which Savage enhances with a chapter called Collaborative Wisdom, provides plenty of information, ideas and support for people like the woman the co-author offers as an example, but an actual flesh and blood institute with a diverse collection of members sharing their collective wisdom, would be a benefit and potential boon to the region, he said.
In the meantime, while Savage and Cory Strandberg of Vertical Takeoff Ventures Inc. from Kimberley, work to establish the Kootenay Leadership Institute, he said he recommends leaders of all kinds check out the book.
“You have a vision for what you hope your life—your business—your contribution to the world—will be. But the road to get there often seems winding, uneven, and filled with pitfalls. This book has 52 leaders each giving a leadership lesson,” he said, offering an example – a tidbit of knowledge that alone could alter and enhance how a person operates in their world.
“When you think you have an agreement and you think you understand, ask three more questions and keep asking questions,” he offered.
East Kootenay News Online Weekly asked Savage if there is a particular leader or leaders who have stood out in history for him.
After pausing to think, he replied, “I really don’t believe in heroes or villains. Quite possibly, the greatest leaders in history we might not recognize simply because they have been great leaders. I tend to not want to put anyone up on that sort of pedestal.”
He pointed at Canada’s founding Prime Minister John A Macdonald. “Sir John was a visionary. Without his vision British Columbia would not be a part of Canada – it is safe to assume. Yet he was alcoholic fool.”
The Kootenays have leaders, Savage said. “Let’s celebrate them and build new ones.”
The dream of the Kootenay Leadership Institute is to become an internationally-respected, open and diverse collective that, through collaboration, connects and builds leaders and leadership skills founded on expertise in the Kootenays while also bringing in leaders from other areas and nations when appropriate to build our personal, professional, corporate, entrepreneurial and regional economic, environmental and social success in the B.C. Kootenays of the 21st Century, Savage outlined.
Following the March 31 gathering at Lotus Books, Kimberley’s Ingrid Liepa thanked Savage for taking the “bold step of putting your vision of the KLI out to the community and inviting folks to begin gathering around the campfire.”
“We have a great start,” Savage said, adding that a number of next steps are already planned, including:
Through Cranbrook Sunrise Rotary, offer Leadership to Mt. Baker High School (April); Convene a World Café to co-create the vision and foundations (May); Host a gathering in Cranbrook in June 2012 Leaders and Leadership in the Kootenays, and developing a basic structure, calendar of meetings and a website (June), and more!
Savage is also the guest speaker at the upcoming Kimberley Business Awards gala April 14 at the Kimberley Conference & Athlete Training Centre.
For more information: David Savage www.savagemanage.com or [email protected].
Cory Strandberg has created a business Facebook page that is now published and found at this link: https://www.facebook.com/KootenayLeadership .
Above picture: David Savage conducts a gathering at Lotus Books March 31 to discuss the establishment of a Kootenay Leadership Institute and share Ready, Aim, Excel!
Ian Cobb e-KNOW
