A week ago, I was noting that the Flames’ first victory should be celebrated as I didn’t know how these chronic underachievers that I support would fare through the rest of the year.
A week later, I (and many in Flames fandom) are stunned at an almost unprecedented road trip run…
Whether that level of play holds for the rest of the year remains to be seen but wow, I’m actually enjoying being a Flames fan the past week – a strange feeling indeed! 🙂
Well, almost…
Today marks one year since Premier Scott Moe led his #Saskatchewan Party government to a resounding re-election win.
At the time, #Sask had 650 active #COVID19 cases and 25 deaths, now 2,822 and 817, respectively.
Just 23 in hospital on Oct. 26, 2020 — 293 now.#skpoli #COVID19SK— Phil Tank (@thinktankSK) October 26, 2021
As the Sask Party cruised to a pretty dominant re-election while almost taking out another NDP leader in his own riding one year ago today, there were reasons for optimism in the province:
* vaccines were on the horizon, projected to begin rolling out by the end of the year.
* Saskatchewan cases/hospitalizations/deaths were incredibly low and I would have to double-check but I think there had literally not been a single Covid-related death in the month before the election (okay, maybe one.)
* There was a feeling that people wanted stability and familiarity during a pandemic election and the long-standing Sask Party offered that.
Who knew that one year after that election:
* the willingly unvaccinated would be a major cause of a system-crushing fourth wave
* Saskatchewan’s healthcare system would be so strained, we would be requesting federal help and sending ICU patients out of province. Multiple Covid deaths would be a daily occurrence, sometimes reaching double digits!
* …and the Sask Party leadership would be a lot less familiar as they all but went into hiding after basically declaring Covid over in mid-July 2021 and lifting pretty much any and all restrictions.
After record-setting case #s, hospitalizations, deaths & now critically ill patients being transferred out of province, many voters are realising they made a huge mistake.
Next election, I hope ppl also realise having a doctor in the top seat might be a good idea!
— Jason Hammond (@headtale) October 20, 2021
This is one of those songs that I have to rewind and listen to an extra time or two every time it comes on.
I came across this version which is arguably more poignant than the original as Ms. Carter is now singing about youthful innocence from a perspective of an older woman rather than when she sang it originally as a relatively young woman herself.
And here’s a take on the same song from the man’s point of view…
“Strawberry Wine” – Deana Carter
Grandpa and Grandma enjoyed supper on their 50th Anniversary with the entire family last night including their four grandkids…
I was originally going to do the flight on their actual anniversary which happens to be today but ended up moving it up at the suggestion of the Regina Flying Club.
That was a great decision as it helped give a theme and some great photos to a slideshow I put together and have posted on social media today.
Happy 50th Mom and Dad – love you very much!
The years have truly flown by – I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane…
I feel like this is worth acknowledging…hopefully not because it’s a rarity this year!
I usually post a picture for Throwback Thursday but for something different today, I thought I’d post a different type of “throwback”.
I was recently talking with someone about the best leadership/management/business books we’d read. I said I have a few favourites but one called “Employees First, Customers Second” by Vineet Nayar was the first one that jumped to mind.
This is a fairly lengthy excerpt from an interview with him but worth a read:
The trust between the management and the employees are amongst the lowest today in the world. The first thing that you need to do is create an environment of trust where the employees believe what you are saying and are willing to follow you wherever you are going. Therefore, by pushing the envelope of trust you can create an environment of trust. So that’s the first thing that you need to do. The second is you need to make all the enabling functions, H.R., finance, and all these functions, the office of the CEO which all have enormous power with them, accountable to the employees as much as the employees are accountable to them. So we created an electronic trouble ticketing system where an employee can open a trouble ticket on any of these functions and they have to resolve these issues within a certain period of time and the ticket is only closed by the employees. The third is to make the management and managers as equally accountable to the employees as the employees are and one of initiatives we took was my 360 Degree is done by 80,000 employees across the world and the results are published on the web. That is true of 5,000 other of my colleagues and this is purely in development, this 360 Degree, which we use for development purposes but the very fact that you as an employee can rate a CEO and the results are published on the web for all to see creates the accountability for the managers and management, and creates a culture which unlocks a huge amount of energy in the corporation. Those are 3 small steps of how you can make an organization which is top heavy into something which is accountable to the employees with huge amounts of energy which gets unleashed as a result.
Here’s a TEDx talk where he summarizes this approach (but as with most things, the book is better than the movie since the book gets into a lot more detail about the impact this approach had on his company)
I don’t think Scott Moe has the emotional maturity and empathy to speak like this…
Moe does, however, has the ability to turn Saskatchewan into a dystopian nightmare…
Several of my patients were selected for evacuation to Ontario this week. Though clinical teams played no role in choosing who went (all handled higher up), we worked hard to ensure that handover and transfer were as safe as possible.
— Jeremy Katulka (@JeremyKatulka) October 20, 2021
Some of the society-shifting impacts of Covid are being seen most clearly in workplaces. A lot depends on whether managers and leaders are able to shift their thinking…
