Rosemary McCarney, CEO and President, Plan Canada, Interview Part II

Interview with Rosemary McCarney, Part II 

Invisible Mentor: Rosemary McCarney, President and CEO
Company Name: Plan Canada
Website: http://plancanada.ca

Turning Ideas into Action 

I have a few tips to share on turning ideas into action, but read Part I of the interview in case you missed it!

1. Receive the ideas: Listen to what Rosemary McCarney is saying in the interview, then write down five of her ideas that resonate with you.
2. Expand the ideas: What's one of the five ideas that you want to build on?
3. Apply the ideas: What projects are you working on that you can apply the one idea?

Part One: Introduction

Avil Beckford: In a couple of sentences, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Rosemary McCarney: I’m the CEO and President of Plan Canada, part of the International Federation of Plan. We work in about 70 countries around the world and I’ve been the CEO of Plan for six years and my background has very much been in the law and financial area where I entered the International Development field about 25 years ago, so most of my career has been in international development with that particular lens.

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

Rosemary McCarney: I would say they are experiences.

1. As a young woman, probably just out of my teens, I had this amazing opportunity that I had wanted to do since I was a little kid in primary school, which was to go and work in the Canadian North, and as a young law student, I got this summer job to do an internship in Yellowknife. I spent the summer working with aboriginal leaders in every community across the Northwest Territories, and it was pivotal because here I was this southerner, female, young, and white. I learned so much working with the role I had, it was people I needed to be successful with in terms of cultural nuance, in terms of negotiation, in terms of building relationships. It was extraordinary, and it always stayed with me. I would love to go back and do that again. But it taught me a lot, and I think really without ever thinking that I would be in a position to work in Africa and Asia and China and Latin America, the former Soviet Union as the East Bloc emerged, the lessons I learned as a 19/20-year-old in the North have always stayed with me.

2. I think the other one, which is completely different, is a decision when I finished law school to go to the United States and spend a few years in one of the biggest economies in the world, one of the biggest political influencers, in the world, and to work in that environment both as a professor and then as a corporate lawyer on Wall Street. Again just in terms of a very different culture than what I was raised in in Canada, in terms of a world view, and a perspective that people even now will say, ‘well there’s not a lot of difference between the US and Canada.’ It would be interesting to have your perspective on this too, but, in fact, there wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t whacked on the side of the head, to use that metaphor, or I didn’t think oh my gosh, that was different, or I didn’t see that one coming, or wow, you wouldn’t have had that comment in Canada, and every single day, what I came to appreciate was just the subtlety of culture, that profound deep culture is what’s way under the surface. It’s not about the currency or the language or what your houses look like or how you organize your society, it’s really all the profound cultural differences that are highly nuanced, but profound, and so the US was a great learning laboratory for me.

3. And then the third one, without question, is having children. I just think that having children and, again, the world view, the lens that they bring to things, the challenges that you’re faced with raising children. I was in a negotiating program once and I used a case study without naming names or the particular situation of a complex negotiation, and people are really fascinated with all these expert negotiators, are really fascinated by how I work through this complexity, and so once everybody has finished discussing it over an hour, I said well that was an actual situation with my 13-year-old daughter. I think with children, you’re bringing all of your experiences, and all of your intellect and emotions because it’s so fraught with emotions when you’re dealing with children, so certainly having children – it’s a major life shaper.

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

Rosemary McCarney: I think for me that the piece that I feel really good about is how by being in Plan and working with colleagues across the world in Plan that we’ve been able to bring a spotlight on the particular situation of girls around the world, here in Canada. I think that we led with our hearts, we didn’t have funding to do it and it wasn’t in the strategy but, a couple of us were sitting down one day and thinking about the numbers and the data, where the progress wasn’t being made and we just started to unlock that and look at the data and look at the absence of data and over the course of three or four years, we’ve changed the global dialogue on girls and we were able to influence the United Nations to declare an International Day of the Girl Child and while that may seem like window dressing or nothing very serious, in practice it was very serious because we listened to girls all over the world who said this is what we would do with a day, we would hold our leaders accountable, it would be a day where we could have meetings and make people keep their promises to us on early marriage legislation, that it would actually be enforced that we could talk about the violence against us, that we could talk about what we want to do and our aspirations and so I think that for me, when I talked about when people say, oh you know you can change the world for young children, go out there and change the world, I think that this one, it took a lot of years and it took a lot of education and training and data and research. I think we’re part of that huge change in the global dialogue around girls, I think we’ve put the spotlight on girls and turned people’s minds around on this issue and I see it constantly so I feel really good about that.

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

Rosemary McCarney:

1. I think that one of the things that’s important, and often I worry that young people, in particular young women, don’t get enough counselling on, is that you’ve got to be the same person you are at work that you are at home. You can’t park yourself at the entrance door of your office, or your business, or your workplace, and become someone else, and leave your true self at that door because of some sense of norms or expectations that you’ll behave differently. I think you’ve got to be the same person whatever the situation, and you shouldn’t compromise on that. I think that’s really important because that’s when you’re stressed, you’re not yourself, you’re not performing at your best if you can’t be who you are, so I think that’s important and I think the other things come from that.
2. It’s about being consistent so people can trust that you mean what you say and you’re not going to do something tomorrow, but say something different the next day. That consistency is important so you’ve got a certain amount of not predictability but at least predictability from the trust factor, in terms of that you’re true to that.
3. I think that authenticity that you’re not putting on a different persona, that the way you are is the way you are so I think people see through inauthenticity pretty quickly these days, I think that’s important.
4. I think you just have to be open, you have to put yourself out there and say, this is who I am, and this is what I believe. I’m open to changing my mind on this, but be honest and open and I think people relate to that. When I came into Plan, I remembered in my first meeting with the full team, I said, I’m delighted to be here and I hope that you will come to trust that when I say something I mean it, and I walk the talk, but I said without knowing anything about me I don’t expect that to just happen automatically because there’s a title, that here’s who I am. The reality is I’m the mother of three teenagers, and that’s a pretty big part of my life that I can’t just shut off when I walk in here. I could feel that the women just relaxed in the room and everybody chuckled because, of course, most people in that room had elderly parents or young children or adolescent children. I think that being open and showing who you are, that when you come in, you’re here to do a great job, but you’re not somebody else, you’ve got all this background that’s also you.
5. I think the next thing would be adaptability. You know, life changes, circumstances changes, the people around you change and it’s just that being open to, being adaptive all of the time in your strongly held views and your beliefs and your world view; it’s managing that tension between consistency and adaptability all the time.

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

Rosemary McCarney: That’s a kind of a tough one cause I think that there’s a host of historical characters that come to mind with that question, and whether it’s political figures or religious figures or military figures, I am eclectic, I love things from everything, I like all kinds of music, I like all kinds of literature and so I would be thinking, I’d probably want to draw somebody from a lot of different categories.

1. I would love to meet Queen Victoria, she’s just this formidable woman and how she navigated the European royalty and  her staying power on the throne through massive changes and wars. I think she’d be kind of interesting if she would be open and authentic [laughter] and willing to talk about the kinds of conversations she had with herself at night.
2. I don’t mean this in a kind of a spiritual way, but another woman I’d really like to meet is Mother Theresa, when you asked the question about how you motivate, I’m thinking she was just tenacious, absolutely tenacious in almost impossible situations but she just sought through the clutter and the debris and saw what was possible. She saw what was possible, I read her book many, many years ago, the book about Mother Teresa (My profile) and that one comment has always stayed with me, which was how do you handle the masses of Calcutta and all the poor and the dying,  and she said they die one at a time, I’m going to save them one at a time. She didn’t see a million people in need, she saw one individual after one individual after one individual. I think sometimes we get so caught up in the big numbers of this many hungry children, and children dying of malaria, and we have to constantly step back and remind ourselves that’s one little child who’s got family and brothers and sisters and that every one of them matters and it’s not a big number so I think she would be fascinating to talk to.
3. I think that one of the people that’s a more contemporary person would be Nelson Mandela, and not because he’s Nelson Mandela, but I think it’s like how do you hang on through what would have appeared for him to be living, existing in a brutal prison situation where there was no end, there was never any end in sight and like a term, a sentence where you could think, if I could just hang on five years or even 30 years, but it could have gone on his whole lifetime, and how he could have managed to hang on and not lose his humanity, and then emerge as someone who actually was able to at least speak the language of forgiveness and reconciliation. I’m just amazed at that, I question whether I could have done that for sure.
4. The other one that I find interesting; and it’s just because of things that I’ve read about him is Napoleon. He was one of the biggest dreamers on the planet in history, in terms of what he thought he could do, conquer far-away lands that have been unexplored. He was one of those big vision people. I don’t have to agree with his tactics, I don’t even have to agree with his vision, but how did some guy living in the middle of Europe back in that period of history, how did that big vision of I can do whatever, where did that come from, how did that come forward?
5. My other one – you asked for five! I would love, love, love, love to have had a conversation with Sir Isaac Newton (My profile), he’s brilliant. I could have said Albert Einstein (My profile), but he’s more contemporary, so I wanted to reach further back. Sir Isaac Newton, can you imagine, again I often talk even in this conversation, about world views and where they come from and can you imagine, he’s defying accepted science and he’s defying accepted notions of religion, religious views, a view of the world so just that ability and tenacity to say, I don’t think this quite measures up, this doesn’t quite add up and I’m going to try this or think about that or prove this against all odds, against all of the prevailing wisdom and intelligence and science of the day. I would love to know how his mind worked.

Kind of weird selections I must say, but they would be really interesting conversations for those particular reasons and different conversations, obviously with each one.

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

Rosemary McCarney: It’s not a book that’s well known, and it’s not one of the big literatures of history, but I think one of the best books I’ve read that stuck with me is a book called Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World by Margaret Wheatley. I read it when it came out in the 90s, but what she did, she took the emerging field of quantum physics, quantum theory, and applied it to leadership, and it’s absolutely fascinating and it was my introduction as a non-scientist into the world of particle theory. She gives the reader this ability to understand quantum theory, particle theory and praxis, but she takes it and applies it to leadership and organizational change and it’s so interesting.

It’s interesting at a personal level, at a professional level, but mostly at a personal level. It did a number of things for me. First of all, I see praxis everywhere as a result of reading that book, and I find it so interesting, but I think the thing that it did was it ignited for me a love of science. I didn’t have that when I was in school. I was very much, on a liberal arts path, and I loved conceptual thinking. I have become a kind of amateur, I read everything about Newtonian physics and quantum physics and things like that and I love that stuff. I love learning about it, reading about it, and I think it’s fundamentally important to the kind of constructs whether it’s in science or medicine or health or organizational principle, so I would say that book.

Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on different deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the time? The prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million.

Rosemary McCarney:

1. I’d take the most recent book on quantum theory coming out of the experiments in Bern, Switzerland.
2. Another book that I really like that’s more recent is a book called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. I really like it because it’s a historical look at why violence is decreasing and it’s really a profound book, it’s quite good.
3. I love The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference because I think it gives us a way of thinking about how change happens and the kinds of people, the personalities that influence change happening in a broader social sense.
4. I think the book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't is really good because it really provides a map of how to move yourself as a human being or an organization or a volunteer situation you’re involved in to a whole different level and it’s a very deliberate kind of step book that breaks it down. I think that’s really interesting and some of these I’ve read, well all of these I’ve read, but being able to think about those and pull them together.
5. A piece of literature that I’m dying to read, actually hoping to start it this weekend is a book called The Paris Wife: A Novel, a book about Ernest Hemingway who I think is one of the iconic characters of the last century.

Avil Beckford: Besides reading your five books, how would you spend your time?

Rosemary McCarney I don’t think I would appreciate being on a desert island for two years. To be honest, I think I would enjoy it for about two weeks as I read those books and then I’d probably spend most of my time trying to figure out how to get off that island because I don’t think I’m a very good island person, I really am a social animal so it would probably be plotting the escape.

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

Rosemary McCarney: My downtime, what I love at downtime is if I had an hour, for me, winter air, being outside in cold air, I just find it just renewing. I love winter, I love cold winter, I love lots of snow and I always feel healthiest and most energized when I’m in a cold winter day outside, and so I will spend a lot of time outside whenever I can, if it’s winter and, also in the summer, I love the outdoors, but it is being outside in the country then coming in from that and getting into a really good piece of literature, a good book, I read a lot.

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

Rosemary McCarney: I’m happy when I’m outside on a winter day.

Get Started Here – I want to help you get started on your learning journey. Read The Invisible Mentor 2015 Reading Challenge, then Join the Facebook Group for the Reading Challenge today, connecting the ideas from the books you read!

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