The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Alliance Atlantis’

Interviewee Name: Phyllis Yaffe, Chair

Company Name: Ryerson University

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Phyllis Yaffe: I’ve spent my career doing things in the cultural industry in Canada. I became the CEO of Alliance Atlantis in 2005, and we sold the company at the end of 2007. I officially retired, but my husband says I’m failing at that. I now spend a lot of my time on corporate boards, as well as chairing the board of Ryerson University, so I have many interests that I spend my time on now.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Phyllis Yaffe: Like everybody else, when my child was young it was hard and I had to struggle with it. As she got older life got easier and of course now it’s not an issue because she’s a grown-up. I have to be very organized, and I have to think about plans. I organize my life around my family and my world and it isn’t always straightforward. But I’m organized.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Phyllis Yaffe:

1. Be open-minded.
2. Make good friends whose values are your values and work with them.

I think if you’re a good person life will be good.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

Phyllis Yaffe: I enjoy cooking. I love to entertain friends at home, that’s a fun thing to do. I like to invite them over and cook with them, and make the cooking the entertainment part. I go to movies a lot. I read when I can, I’ve always been a reader and I like to read fiction. It’s a whole world of great stories. We like to socialize, we like to have friends over a lot.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Phyllis Yaffe: I don’t know where my ideas come from and whether they are great or bad. They just come out of the blue, and I don’t know if that means they are just mulling around in your head for while and they just surface. But I would say that I have no idea where my ideas come from, but it seems they just come from out of nowhere. An idea would come out and just pop out of mouth and I have no idea where it came from.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Phyllis Yaffe: The hardest thing to be in this world is happy. If you say that you are happy then I would say that you’re successful. And some people define that differently. It’s a title, an office in some fancy building for some people, and for others it is creating the things they want to create, working with the people they want to work with. For some people it’s money, and for others it’s the freedom to have time. Success for me is doing the things that I want to do, and having the time to do them.

Avil Beckford: In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Phyllis Yaffe: The way I know that I am happy at what I’ve done is if I’m doing the things that I wanted to do and enjoying them, that’s definitely success.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Phyllis Yaffe: For sure taking opportunities when they came along, but the other thing is making sure that you have smart people around you. I mean that by saying not to be intimidated by having people who are better at what they do than what you do, than how you perform your job. I always thought that if I had the very smartest people around me how could I fail. I’d say that’s true. There are many people who don’t like smart people around them because they like to be the smartest in the room. But I always liked to be the person who had the smart people around her.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Phyllis Yaffe: Well I know that it’s harder now than when I was young to find the right career path so I guess I would say to think that one through. Think about what you like doing, make sure it’s something that you enjoy, understand that enjoying it, being happy with your choices is way more important than what makes more money, and what’s the most prestigious. If you’re a cab driver and that gives you the most enjoyment in life, then that’s your career path. Don’t let the world’s view of what success is define yours, you have to define it for yourself.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Phyllis Yaffe: I thought about this and I didn’t have great names. When my daughter applied for school she came up with great names. I think all mine would be writers. I’m a big reader of fiction, and I’d love to meet the writers of some of the novels that I’ve loved. I’d like to meet Shirley Hazzard who wrote The Great Fire. I’d like to meet Ann Patchett. Ian McEwan, I’d like to meet him and talk about his writing. I’d just like to meet writers and find out what’s in their heads, put it all together and see what more I can learn from them. And I’d also like to meet both Michelle and Barack Obama. They are very interesting people and I’d like to understand why a politician chooses to be a politician, especially in these days.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Phyllis Yaffe: In Grade 5 my classroom teacher gave me Anne of Green Gables. I know that that sounds like a terrible cliché but it’s true. She gave it to me in hardcover and I still have it. I think it’s the only book I have from so long ago and I never had a hardcover book before that, that was mine, all mine. We had books in the house but children’s books weren’t a big deal. And certainly spending money on them seemed like a great luxury. I remember getting it and how thrilled I was to have it. I read it, I loved it, I don’t think it’s been a huge influence on me as a book, but just getting a hardcover book that was mine to hold was a really important thing for me.

Avil Beckford: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

Phyllis Yaffe: I think I would say all the fiction I mentioned. I would go back and read lots of Doris Lessing. I’d read lots of Ian McEwan, some of Margaret Atwood but not very much – just her older books. I would read as much fictions as I could possibly find.

Avil Beckford: What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Phyllis Yaffe: I think I’d watch Annie Hall forever. I thought it was hysterically funny and I could watch that. The old Joni Mitchell albums would be my favourite.

If you cannot view the YouTube Annie Hall movie trailer, please click here.

If you cannot view the Joni Mitchell YouTube video please click here.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Phyllis Yaffe: I thing there is to much to learn, so many places the go. I like meeting people. I’m open to the world, I’m in a strange place where I have lots of years left to do many things and have many choices to make. I’m interested in where the next choice will take me.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Phyllis Yaffe: it’s easy to say all the things I’ve already said, reading and friends and all that kind of stuff. But I would say that I’m not good at that, I fail at it.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Phyllis Yaffe: Health!

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Phyllis Yaffe: The people I love are around me.

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Book link are affiliate links.

Interviewee Name: Phyllis Yaffe, Chair

Company Name: Ryerson University

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Phyllis Yaffe: I’ve spent my career doing things in the cultural industry in Canada. I became the CEO of Alliance Atlantis in 2005, and we sold the company at the end of 2007. I officially retired, but my husband says I’m failing at that. I now spend a lot of my time on corporate boards, as well as chairing the board of Ryerson University, so I have many interests that I spend my time on now.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Phyllis Yaffe: I really don’t have a typical day now because my day is made up of the things that I’m responsible for in different organizations. So if there’s a company meeting or I’m getting ready for one, a committee meeting or those kinds of things, that’s how I spend my day. Every day has a different pattern to it, and that is exactly what I wanted. I don’t have a routine. I worked for 38 years, so I think not having a routine is a privilege.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Phyllis Yaffe: Right now it’s the easiest part of my life. I’m interested in the companies I’m on the board of. I enjoy the people that I meet, and I have chosen the companies that I have been involved with for that reason. So I think they’re interesting companies and I enjoy being with the people I work with on those boards so being motivated to do that is really easy.

Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Phyllis Yaffe: Because I started my career a very long time ago in the late 60s early 70s, I had opportunities that you just wouldn’t find today. I graduated from university in 1969 and jobs were not a problem to find. Careers were even interesting to find. I would say that if I had to do it again today I would have a more focused view of what it is I wanted to do.

Avil Beckford: What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Phyllis Yaffe: The businesses that I deal with are struggling with the same issues, and what is interesting to me is that there is a universal thing happening in media today, and it’s the disintermediation of the business models that have been in place for long by the use of the Internet, just the technology that now allows people to have so much access to content in ways that we never thought would happen before. Whether it’s newspapers or books or film it’s just a very different model for the economics of producing content is about to happen or is happening and I think that’s been something that I have watched over the last year. It was certainly there before but now it’s kind of spread everywhere. So I enjoy it, I find it a real challenge to figure out what the future is going to hold.

Avil Beckford: You are the Chair of Ryerson University, what are three threats  you’re facing now and how are you handling them?

Phyllis Yaffe:

1. At Ryerson University we are a child of the government, so how the government spends its money is really crucial to us. So far more or less, the government has been able to support Canadian universities, Ontario Universities with funding that allows us to increase the number of students we bring in, and grow the campus, and those types of things. We are not funded at a high level so more funding is crucial, but to be fair it’s a system that works. I fear for the future because things are about to change. One is the rapid growth of the cost of the healthcare system in this country is making it harder and harder for any government to fund anything but healthcare and that leads to the reduced number of dollars for anything else and I think that just becomes unfortunate for society that we are not able to grow the other parts of our communities. So I worry about the funding model.
2. I worry about governments changing and being less supportive of education. We happen to have a Premier right now in Ontario who is self defined as the education Premier and that means that post secondary and other kinds of education has been at the focus of what he’s been concerned about personally and I think that’s just wonderful for us at Ryerson because we know that we can count on the Premier in any discussion. I worry that that may not carry on, not only by him, but any party that comes into power will they have that focus.
3. We have a rapidly growing demand for spaces in universities in Toronto when we don’t have the spots. We don’t have the money, we don’t have the ability to serve that community. Right now at Ryerson we have almost 70,000 applications and only 6,000 spots to let people in.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Phyllis Yaffe: I just bring what I have learned over my career. When people say, “how do you get on boards?” You have to live your life. People are brought to boards because of what they’ve done in their careers, how they’ve behaved, and who they know. I’m the sum total of all of that, that’s me, that’s who I am.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Phyllis Yaffe: When I started being a broadcaster, and it has happened to me many times over my career, I changed careers completely. I went from the not-for-profit sector to working in semi-businesses, and then I ran organizations, funded writers, and then I became a broadcaster and I’d never done that before. I’ve never ran a business, I didn’t know anything about broadcasting. I didn’t know how it worked, I didn’t know who did what, I just knew we had a license and we had to start a channel. Those are the kinds of challenges that have happened to me over the years. Those were giant challenges. I was silly, I thought I could do them and I did, and it worked out.

The thing I did and the lesson I learned is to hire great people and hope for the best. Incent them, help them, guide them, give them as many opportunities as you can, but pick good people. Surround yourself as I hope I did with people who are way smarter than you are. They will make life better for you, so that’s what I did.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Phyllis Yaffe: I worked with our lawyer Peter Grant. He was a wonderful help to me in my career at an early stage when I worked at the Association of Publishers. I had talked to him throughout my career and at one point he asked me if I wanted to meet the people at what was called the First Choice, it’s now called The Movie Network, and that led me to doing my job at Fund. I started Fund which is the Foundation to Underwrite New Drama. It’s now called the Harold Greenberg Fund. Peter was the lawyer for them and because he knew me and thought that would work out, he introduced me to them and it worked. I worked there for nine years. I liked what they did and I guess they liked what I did. And that led me to work at Alliance. I went from there to starting Showcase, and Peter was the lawyer for Alliance. Peter was a big part of how my career happened.

Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

Phyllis Yaffe: My biggest failure in television and broadcasting is we had the opportunity to buy the Sopranos and we didn’t. We could have been the original, the only broadcaster of the Sopranos and we just didn’t come up with the money. We lost in a bidding war. We thought we wanted it but we didn’t want to spend the money they wanted and we let somebody else have it and that was a terrible mistake. And then when it came time to buy Six Feet Under, I said “I know it’s going to be expensive but it is a defining moment and we have to go for it.” And it was a defining moment, and it was the right thing to do. So I learned that sometimes you have to go outside your comfort zone, or even outside your budget to make something happen in a business.

Avil Beckford: What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?

Phyllis Yaffe: We applied for an over the air television network and we didn’t get it. Shortly after that we realized that it would have been a terrible mistake if we had gotten it. You know, I try not to be disappointed by the things that do not work out. I move on to the next thing.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Phyllis Yaffe: We had a moment where we had to decide if we wanted to sell Alliance Atlantis, or if we wanted to hold on and try to build it some more. That was a really big decision, but honestly it was an easy one because we felt we had explored every opportunity to grow, and it was going to be a very hard slog to grow in any organic way. We were always going to be struggling to make significant gains. An opportunity came up that seemed like the right one and we took it. I look back on that and think it was the right thing. The shareholders certainly thought so, and it has changed my life of course, but I am happy about that.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Phyllis Yaffe:

1. My family is the biggest part of that. My marriage, my child, those are the things that will always be fundamental in my life.
2. My career has always been challenging and interesting and I have had wonderful times.
3. I’ve had some friends who have made a big difference in my life. And these are the things that matter in life.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Phyllis Yaffe: I’m sure every mother would say my daughter, and I am proud of her, she’s a wonderful human being. I’m proud that she came to a life that is driven by the values that I hope I had something to do with. That’s really only in my personal life. I’m happy to have made a difference in other people’s lives when they worked for me. People remind me of that, and I’m always really delighted to hear it. It’s lovely to thing that you can have some impact on lives, the way you run your life and have a chance to do that.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Phyllis Yaffe: As I said Peter Grant was a really important person in my life. He gave me really great advice. He was helpful in figuring out what it was I was good at, and what I should think of doing more of, and it was really helpful. He introduced me to opportunities I really wouldn’t have had otherwise. I will always be grateful to him. The people I have worked for have made a really big difference in my life, and have showed me their styles and how they got things done and I learned enormously from them. I would say all of those people, and they have tended to primarily all have been men.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Phyllis Yaffe: They found skills of mine that they thought was useful and helped me realize that I could use those skills in different ways because I do not have a great imagination when it comes to what I’m good at. I’m not my best critic, so they’ve been able to say, “try this you’d be good at it,” and I would look at them and say “are you sure?” They helped me realize that I could be good at these things. So I would say they helped me to understand what I was good at.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Phyllis Yaffe: I always tell everyone I can to take opportunities when they come along. Try to figure out what is a really good opportunity and try not to limit yourself. There will be many changes along the way and it’s important to think about yourself in different ways, and give yourself opportunities. I’m confident that people who take a risks – you may lose, there is no question that it can happen – there are great opportunities for you. Be open to new opportunities, don’t cut yourself off, think positively about them and be surprised at what comes along.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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“I say that presidents of companies should be kicked out every five years or changed because we are only good in one or two areas not five or six or the full breadth of what a CEO does and I continue to believe that. There should be far more turnover of leadership in companies than there are today because people get stale,” says Kevin Shea. Part Two of this interview is packed with advice based on years of experience in the communications sector. After reading Kevin’s interview here are of few of my takeaways, what are your?

1. Listen and hear
2. Find and work with others who complement your skills
3. Going against the grain can have huge payoffs
4. Don’t give up on your dreams just because others tell you that you’ll fail
5. Interact with people from all age groups

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Montreal, and my family moved to Los Angeles when I was nine months old, and I’d like to say it was because I was having difficulty with two languages. My parents moved back to Canada, to Toronto when I was about 10. I grew up in Toronto and was involved as an actor when I was a kid and was always connected to the broadcasting television business. I knew that was the business that I wanted to get into. I went to York University and studied history, I’m not sure why I did that. After university I started my career in the cable industry.

Many years later I am now running my own company SheaChez Inc., have been for the past five years. I get involved in various start-up companies where I assist them with CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) licensing applications, which is a role I did with Sirius Satellite Radio. And I sit on a variety of different boards of private companies and I am chairman of what’s called the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC).

What’s a typical day like for you?

There is no typical day, because I’m self-employed, and as I said I do a lot of board work, my days are a mix of visiting companies I am involved with trying to set up strategic partnerships between companies that I know and companies that I’m involved with, lobbying government on various things and then working on a host of different projects. Quite honestly the overall content of what I do is somewhat similar but my days are dramatically different.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Because there is so much diversity in what I do, what I mean by that is, I’m on the board of Cookie Jar Entertainment for example, which is an animation company and they are involved in what I call the conventional broadcast production business, but I’m also involved in a lot of new media companies and just diversity alone keeps me very interested. I work with entrepreneurs from the age of 20 to 70. In the old broadcasting business there are still a lot of legends and in the new media business there a lot of young, smart people.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I’ve thought of that before, and in many respects I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had some fabulous jobs and I’ve had the privilege of starting and running YTV the kid’s network for seven or eight years. I was at GlobalTV in its best years, Atlantis before it was Alliance Atlantis where we launched Life Network. That was great grounding for me, but there was always a bit of entrepreneur in me that wanted me to do my own thing. Having the benefit of working in large corporations most of my career has now allowed me to take that and help companies along the way, which has been a real benefit.

What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

I think the most profound discovery is how dramatically changed the broadcasting and communications sector is becoming. It is literally changing every day, and for many it’s very difficult to keep up with. It’s dramatically altered almost every aspect of the broad communications sector whether that’s newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. I mean it’s in a real state of flux. Even advertising is going through its own dramatic changes as it tries to keep up and understand all the change, and in the mean time consumers are very quick adapters, particularly Canadian consumers and they just want more, more, more. I guess the other profound discovery is that we’ve almost moved back 40 years sort of pre-cable and pre-online where the expectation is you buy the device, for example a TV, you put up an antenna and everything is free, and today’s consumer is also expecting everything online to be free and we both know that free isn’t going to pay for it, so that’s a discovery. It’s the reality of today.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

I don’t know if there has been a single advance, but I think that for all of us, and when I say us I mean those who grew up in the traditional, conventional broadcasting business, understanding the impact that these new distribution technology advances are like night and day and is still very much a struggle for a lot of executives to figure out where this business is going. Today I spend the bulk of my time and effort in the new media business not the old media business and it’s been a dramatic shift. It’s not well understood and we don’t know with certainty where it’s going.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

1. Keeping current, particularly as someone who is a consultant and advisor you have to know what’s going on, so I find myself spending more time with younger people because they have a better handle on where things are going
2. We saw last year what impact the economy had on investments and in Canada the sources of investments in new start-ups in the communications business is difficult, there aren’t a lot of people investing in that.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

My big break came when Phil Lind at Rogers hired me to come in and run Cable Satellite Network way back when, and put me into Rogers a much bigger company than I was with in a leadership role. He remains both a close business associate and key mentor of mine. When I moved around in Rogers, Colin Watson who was my boss was an incredibly supportive and smart guy, so I would say it was a big break getting into Rogers at that time

Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

In my early days at Rogers when I was running this organization called Cable Satellite Network, and this was before we had specialty networks in Canada, the only thing we had was live coverage of the House of Commons, no Toronto Sports Network (TSN) or Newsworld. I had worked on a couple of applications for TV Ontario (TVO), one was called Galaxy to start a national children’s channel. This was before YTV and we kept being turned down by the CRTC and it was very disheartening because it seemed like such an obvious thing because we had TV Ontario that was a core strategic partner which was the first time that a broadcast and cable company had come together, which was my doing because I was the one who put that partnership together. I learned that we were before our time. The CRTC had no policies, they have never licensed a specialty channel, and the moment they licensed TSN and MuchMusic, which were the first two and they weren’t specialty channels back then, they were paid TV channels that almost went bankrupt and changed to specialty. It was when we all realized that it was time to put together a kid’s specialty channel and YTV was born. Now YTV was a controversial license because it had cable companies as shareholders and producers as shareholders, we didn’t have a broadcaster. TVO didn’t participate this time. I learned that you have to wait in this country [Canada] until they are ready, and secondly you have to be patient, and don’t stop because someone says no doesn’t mean that you go away forever. It took us six years to get an YTV license. It was called something different in different applications but in the end it was worth it.

The failure was Galaxy and the lesson is, do not give up and sometimes you are a bit premature.

What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?

Maybe not going out on my own earlier and starting my own cable networks. There is nothing that I can really point to be honest.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

I was at Global TV and had been there for six or seven years as president, they had just bought the newspapers, whether I had a premonition, I realized that this acquisition of the newspaper was going to dramatically change how the company was going to be in the future. I thought about this for a few weeks, talked to a few friends and associates, and to resign from a big job at that point to go and do my own thing was one of the biggest decisions that I`d ever made. And you leave from having assistants, flying all over, all sorts of expenses being covered, stock options, to do your own thing is a big decision. I look back and say thank God I did it for a lot of reasons, given unfortunately what has happened to CanWest today, and I’m not saying that I predicted it. I look back and say I did the right thing even though I didn’t have all that information at the time.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. Being born since it wouldn’t matter otherwise
2. Having four great sisters who are my best friends and I mean that, and they have been very influential in my life
3. Having two wonderful children

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Starting YTV. I look back at my career and it took a long time to get the license, everybody said it would be a failure and would be off the air and bankrupt in six months and when I left after seven years it was probably one of the most progressive cable networks in the country.

How did mentors influence your life?

In many ways, and I seek out mentors and they continue to advise me. Somebody told me when I was young that you cannot be an expert in everything, you just can’t, and to concentrate more on your strength than your weaknesses and fill the gaps with people around you that actually complement your areas of weakness. I know where I am good and not so good so I’m always conscious of this advice. I say that presidents of companies should be kicked out every five years or changed because we are only good in one or two areas not five or six or the full breadth of what a CEO does and I continue to believe that. There should be far more turnover of leadership in companies than there are today because people get stale.

What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Make sure that one of your capacity is the capacity to listen because most times people do not listen to what you’re trying to advance because the only thing they have on their mind is what they are trying to advance, and you can tell that there are certain people who are not listening. And it’s almost as if you have to say, ‘hang on a second, I want to make sure that it’s not that you just understand this, but I want to make sure that you are hearing it.’ That’s been valuable personal advice in terms of dealing with people because at the end of the day a company is only as good as the people are.

Which resources (books, movies, training etc.) did your mentors recommend to you?

Everybody has their latest favourite book. It provides them with intelligence or a clue from an operating standpoint that they didn’t have before to see the world in a different way so if I read everyone of those books I`d never be able to leave the house, so I do a lot of scan reading.

As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Keep an eye out for, and try to follow the capacity in which the individual has been able to implement change. I come back to where we started this conversation, and that is unless you can adapt really quickly in this day and age to change, and fully understand that change is happening all around you, so today’s best leaders are those who can actually implement change and that’s not easy because to implement change you have to have buy in, understanding and a collective will and good folks are the ones that today have that capacity and that`s something we all need.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected?  What are 10 takeaways? How can you apply this information? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentorand subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.