Frank Leonard & Associates

  Routine for you; Once in a lifetime for them We had hopped on a small private plane after our business meetings in Vernon for a beautiful flight to Vancouver Island when the latch on the door I was sitting next to popped up.   “Don’t worry about that,” said the pilot, “happens all the time; just push it back down and you’ll be fine.”   So you bet I pushed it back down and I did so again when it popped up a few minutes later.   In fact, I pushed down hard on it for the rest of the flight. ‘Happens all the time’ meant that this was just routine for the pilot but obviously this was not routine for me – it was once in a lifetime and thankfully I’ve been able to talk about it for decades since.   This is also true for those in public office – just another council meeting, just another speech, just another greeting may be routine for you but you need to remember it may be once in a lifetime for others. For example, I’m surprised when a parent comes up to me with...

  Know what you know; Know what you don't My Regional District colleague and I were preparing to propose ‘clean air bylaws’ in the early 1990’s, which is a political way saying we were going to ban smoking in quite a few private and public places.   We had excellent advisors but wanted a second opinion so sought out a coffee meeting with a public health official in Metro Vancouver. My colleague had a background in health care so the two of them took off in conversation about many things I knew very little about but when the official said, ‘and what about that Mogilny trade?’ – my colleague froze.   He knew a great deal about health care but no matter how long he searched his memory, he could not seem to find anything about a Mogilny procedure, level of care or disease .   Fortunately I’m quite a sports fan and jumped in to say ‘wow, I hope he plays on a line with Bure.’ You see I knew I didn’t know health care issues to the level that they did so my role was to s...