Tausi Insider

NASA's new moon rocket, as seen from a marina on Florida's Merritt Island, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral on Nov. 16. Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP Like a powerful beacon lighting the way to a distant shore, the Artemis I spacecraft sliced across the dark Florida sky early Wednesday setting a course for the moon and carrying with it dreams of a new chapter in human space flight. The 1:47 a.m. launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center comes one month shy of 50 years since an astronaut last set foot on the lunar surface, marking the end of the Apollo program. And while Artemis I carries no crew – in place of astronauts its capsule is occupied by three mannequins – the 26-day mission around the moon and back marks a critical step by the U.S. space agency toward repeating that historic feat and then surpassing it with visits to more daring landing sites for longer periods of time. Ultimately, the stated objective of the Artemis program is to lay t...

Ottawa Senators left wing Brady Tkachuk watches as his shot on Buffalo Sabres goaltender Eric Comrie crosses the goal line and into the net. The Canadian Press Sal Galatioto took the stage at an investor conference in Manhattan this summer, on a day when stocks were in free fall. The host of the panel opened the session by asking Mr. Galatioto, the founder of boutique investment bank Galatioto Sports Partners (GSP), for his take on the state of the investing world, considering the bleak backdrop of soaring interest rates and recession fears. “I’ve never seen the markets hotter than this,” Mr. Galatioto said. “I have never been busier.” The host, a Baker McKenzie lawyer named Karl Paulson-Egbert, stopped Mr. Galatioto mid-sentence and asked him to explain what he does, and how he could be so upbeat. The banker explained that he has spent the past four decades advising some of the world’s richest people on buying and selling professional sports franchises. In those lofty economic circl...

Canada's goalkeeper James Pantemis, from left, Alphonso Davies, Richie Laryea, Canada's Mark-Anthony Kaye and Ismael Kone react after losing 2-1 to Morocco in their last match at the World Cup in Qatar, on Dec. 1. Pavel Golovkin/The Associated Press This is the weekly Careers newsletter. Déjà Leonard is a copywriter and freelance journalist based in Calgary. While the Canadian men’s national soccer team left the FIFA World Cup tournament with no wins, there is a lot we can all learn from the team and its impact, according to two career coaches. Alan Kearns, managing partner and founder of Career Joy, and Shirin Khamisa, founder and practice leader at Careers by Design, share insight into how we can apply the experiences of these athletes to our everyday jobs. Don’t underestimate the power of setting an example Stephen Eustáquio from Leamington, Ont., had an article written about him and how he is inspiring younger players and bringing pride to his community. Eustáquio has ha...

Erin Bury, and husband, Kevin Oulds, founders of Wilful, celebrate the Holidays with staff at Founders Restaurant & Cocktail Bar in Toronto on Dec. 1. Peter Power/Tausi Insider Since Willful went fully remote earlier this year, its twice-annual retreats are central to maintaining the company’s culture, says co-founder and chief executive officer, Erin Bury. Willful’s latest gathering, a three-day event that included the Toronto-based estate-planning company’s holiday party on Dec. 1, was no exception. It was a chance for staff to reconnect and for recent hires to meet their colleagues in person for the first time. While a full social schedule will be tiring for some not used to so much in-person time, Ms. Bury says her 20-member team was eager for the in-person holiday gathering. “People miss that in-person interaction,” says Ms. Bury, who surveyed the team in advance to get a sense of what kind of party staff wanted. The company settled on dinner, followed by karaoke and music t...

Canada’s biggest pension fund, CPP Investments, has ended its effort to study investment opportunities in the volatile crypto market, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The reasons behind CPPI’s abandonment of crypto research were not immediately clear. CPPI declined to comment but said it has made no direct investments in crypto. It referred to previous comments on cryptocurrency by its CEO, John Graham, in which he sounded a note of caution. CPPI’s Alpha Generation Lab, which examines emerging investment trends, had formed a three-member team in early 2021 to research crypto currencies and blockchain-related businesses, with a view to taking potential exposure, the people added. But CPPI abandoned the pursuit this year and redeployed the team to other areas, the sources said. CPPI’s move also comes as two of Canada’s largest pension funds have written off their investments after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and crypto lender Celsius this year. Earlier this yea...

Eileen Dooley is a talent and leadership development specialist, and a leadership coach, based in Calgary. If you’ve been working long enough, you’ve likely encountered a “gatekeeper” leadership persona. The one who doesn’t let anyone in their organization do anything without cumbersome and often painfully slow personal approvals from them. The signs are easy to spot. The leader requires all significant communications with client groups and stakeholders to go through them, or immediately be reported to them with regular status updates or rounds of forwarded e-mails. Individual team members develop a protective attitude of “I’d better ask if this is okay to do” based on past interactions that have landed them in trouble for acting independently. Clients have learned that the group with such leadership is often slow to respond and often seeks to work around the leader in question when floating new assignments. Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common issue for new or insecure leaders, ...

Make the most of your first dedicated session with your CEO: Be fully prepared, scrupulously professional and concise. Getty Images/iStockphoto Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for Tausi Insider. Along with crowded gyms, empty bars and full flights to warm destinations, the new year brings the annual gripe-fest about CEO compensation. It’s a familiar chorus in the media, the same story that runs year after year: No one person can really be worth that many millions. The pay gap between the C-suite and the work force is too wide – and getting wider. The perceived lack of fairness is summed up in sensationally naive metrics about how, on the first annual working day, the average chief executive makes more money over breakfast than the average worker makes in a year. But the problem isn’t that chief executives are getting paid too much. The enormous responsibilities they assume, especially those who run public companies, go well beyond their job descriptions. When those “big moments...

When we complain about wasteful meetings, often we are talking about the weekly gatherings of key managers (or in smaller organizations, the full team) that have noble ambitions but end up being little more than status updates and repetitive debate that doesn’t produce solutions. Consultant Kim Scott thinks we can easily change that. All it requires is taking debates and decision-making out of them. That may seem bizarre, but she argues it keeps the staff meeting from assuming a greater importance – and far bigger agenda – than is wise. She argues an effective weekly meeting has three goals: It reviews how things have gone the previous week; it allows people to share important updates; and it forces the team to clarify the most important decisions and debates for the coming week. “That’s it. It shouldn’t be the place to have debates or make decisions,” she tells managers. “Your job is to establish a consistent agenda, insist that people stick to it and corral people who go on for too...

The coach of a group of young skiers whose equipment was lost on the way to an elite cross-country skiing event says Air Canada staff on the ground have been helpful, but appear helpless to fix the problem. DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press Elite young skiers from a cross-country ski team in Chelsea, Que., are in Prince George, B.C., this week for the World Junior under-23 championship trials, events that can determine who makes Canada’s national team. But Air Canada left their skis stranded in Vancouver, and the four athletes, ages 17 to 19, have been without their equipment since they arrived on Sunday. They fear the airline’s errors could cost them a shot at a place on Team Canada and dampen their Olympic dreams. “These are young kids and they’ve been training years for this,” said Maurice Samm, coach of the Chelsea Nordiq ski club. “It’s not just us. There’s a lot of stuff missing.” About 500 athletes are competing until Saturday or Sunday in the Nordiq Canada Selection Trials and N...