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Derek and Reed explore the Character Ethic and apply it to Jean Valjean and Javert in Les Miserables. Spoiler alert!
Also Spider Man.
The guys both gets personal about the sense of responsibility they felt in facing tragedies at work.
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Well, hello there. I'm Reed McColm. I'm your extremely good looking ordinary guy who is here with Essential Dynamics guru and my personal favorite man, Derek Hudson. Derek, how are you?
Derek:Hey, Reed. I'm doing great. How are you?
Reed:I'm just good looking today. I'm just, you know, kind of just just chilling is what they say.
Derek:And that's the reason why we have to never go on YouTube.
Reed:That's right. We can never be live on that. But until until they can see me, I'm the very handsome guy. Now, Derek, in our last Essential Dynamics episode, we discussed the virtues of being a good leader. And one of the things you said was that the most effective way of being a good leader was to work on being a good person.
Reed:That's really hit me. I have thought about that a lot and I want to go into examples of that. You know that in the archetypical story or from Greek myth onward, there's always a hero, and then there's who is the protagonist, and then there's a villain who is the antagonist. Now that's kind of intriguing to me right now in context of what we're speaking in Essential Dynamics because there are many leaders who are not good people. I made that point in the last episode.
Reed:I'd like to kind of elaborate on it now. Even Bond villains have quite a lot of people helping them. And that means that they're leaders too. What do you think about that, of somebody with a virtuous or good leadership style that is based on making everybody who works with him better versus the villainous person who also thinks he's doing the right thing, but leads without care for the consequences to the people he leads.
Derek:Well, there's there's a lot in that, Reed. So let's talk about and I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this, so catch me. But Mhmm. The different kinds of, you know, sort of evil leadership. One of them would be where there's just a bad person trying to do a bad thing, And they're getting people to to, you know, help them do it.
Derek:And there's many examples in history of of that. It's generally for, you know, power and oppression and, you know, wealth and stuff like that. But there's
Reed:Or leading for his own purposes. Having wanting other people to do something in order for his personal gain.
Derek:Sure. And then there's another way where the leader convinces themself that it's good. Right. But it's not. And maybe maybe a third version of this is maybe there is even a sincere, you know, positive objective, but the means are bad.
Derek:They're oppressive and manipulative to the people that you're bringing along. So if you put all that together, you can be a, quote, bad leader or, quote, evil leader if you're trying to accomplish an evil purpose or you're trying to accomplish a purpose in an evil way. And, I said, I don't I don't wanna spend a lot of time on that because I think, you know, my assumption about essential dynamics and life in general is let's look to the positive. And when I say there's a quest, the quest is to make the world better.
Reed:I appreciate that, Derek. And that's part of the reason I'm intrigued by your philosophy or perspective. I do want to just elaborate a little bit more because I don't want to be accused of or I don't want central dynamics to be accused of a Pollyanna or Mary Poppins kind of outlook that all is well with the world. I think there is some merit in looking at if we're staying in fiction, let's look at Les Miserables. The hero of that story, Jean Valjean, is introduced as a thief.
Reed:He steals some bread for his family to eat in oppressive situations in in France. So he is pursued by the law. And in this case, the law is represented by Javert. Now Javert, throughout the book, is a letter of the law guy. And we presume a good person because of it.
Reed:He is unsparing in his application of the law. But the hero of the book is Valjean, who becomes a leader because he is striving to become a better person and improve the lives of those people around him. Are we following so far?
Derek:That Reed, that's just a fantastic example. Powerful, powerful story, and that's, I think, why it's resonated so well even though it's a really, really, really long book.
Reed:Yeah. And there's fully a 40 pages. I've read it of Sewer. Yes.
Derek:That's I was I was just gonna talk about that. I I sat I sat on the beach in Maui a few years ago reading about Paris' sewer system. But but but to to your point, you know, we're quick to judge other people. And all of us do bad things, and I suppose, you know, you might say that stealing bread is bad. But, you know, let's step back and look at the character of people and how they can grow and change.
Derek:And Valjean became became this completely selfless person who dedicated his life to taking care of Cosette. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Reed:And others. He was not you know? He was the mayor of a town. That's I mean, part of the reason Javert was able to
Derek:follow him is because he followed a trail of good acts. Good good acts which, you know, like, you know, employed people and created prosperity and wealth all over the place. He's a good good person, good leader with chased by resolute man who was convinced of his own righteousness.
Reed:Right. That's what intrigues me because Valjer Valjer. Javert and Valjean both must have thought they were doing the right thing.
Derek:Well, you know, Javert did have his his crisis moment.
Reed:Sure.
Derek:When he he realized to just hang on, you know, Valjean saved my life. Yeah. He didn't have to.
Reed:Right. But he couldn't reconcile that and so he he couldn't reconcile his quarry being a good person.
Derek:Well, you know what? And I think about this idea of the character ethic that we talked about. And in my mind, it's not certainly not blind compliance. It's it's not, you know, picking a a code and sticking to the code, you know, regardless. You know, it really is becoming a a person of, you know, maybe sensitive sensitivity to one's own conscience or something like that.
Derek:And and we need to grow and progress in, you know, in how we understand the world and how we think about other people. And Valjean clearly did that and it was you know, his character development is pretty profound in the book. And Javert was stuck on one thing.
Reed:So my question to you then, from the lens of essential dynamics, what develop what did let me think.
Derek:I'm who
Reed:am I talking about? I'm talking about Javert. Who what did Javert do wrong?
Derek:So let's let's just drop down to the the people side.
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:Okay. So Javert's loyalty was to the law of France. You know, put it that way. Right? And he had the opportunity to get to know Valjean as he chased him around France for many years.
Derek:Mhmm. One of the things that I hope that we always do when we think through the points of essential dynamics is to is to look at individuals as people who have their own capacity, their own personality, their own individuality. And that we try to understand people from where they're coming from. And if you know, I mean, Javert was in a system, which maybe wasn't wasn't a progressive, corrections penal system or whatever. But what you would look at if you were the person who's trying to right the wrong is to say, why did Valjean do what he did?
Derek:What does he what does he learn from it? And, you know, will he pay me for the bread now if I catch up with him?
Reed:Now that's a good point. It's perhaps Javert's blindness in not being able to see that the punishment was outsized the crime, particularly after years of chasing. But it's an interesting thought, isn't it? I mean, what does the evil person do wrong if the evil person is committed to his or her philosophy? You know?
Derek:You know, I I think if if you put the people first, then you can't get in too much trouble. And I don't mean license. I don't mean, you know, anything goes. I don't like, but if you think about, you know, the group and the individual's value and potential to progress, then that's that's real leadership is sort of picking someone up from wherever they are, respecting their own individual agency and, you know, supporting them. So I don't know that the prison system is set up to do that.
Derek:Mhmm. And we do rely on our institutions, so I don't know that we should be quick to condemn Javert. But he, in himself, got to a point where he said, I can't I don't understand how I can be the the good guy and the bad guy at the same time.
Reed:Yeah. It it was it it ended his life, that that perspective. But, Derek, I love this, what you're saying, because what I considered Javert in our lens to be to have his quest, boy, he knew his quest. He had purpose. And I guess what you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong, is that his inability to understand people or to put any humanity into his quest is what get him in.
Derek:Sure. Sure. Now, Reed, I really appreciate this because probably my favorite song to sing along with in all of musical theater is Stars. Oh, really? Which Javert sings and the one of the reasons I mean, it's a great song, but one of the reasons I really like it is it's like one of the few that's in my limited range.
Reed:Yeah. It has three notes.
Derek:Yeah. And they're low and they're low. Right? And and so I'm going to sing it for you now. No.
Reed:No. Thank you very much. Thank you. We've gone too far with this
Derek:episode. Yeah. We're having problems with the Zoom. It's getting cut off. Oops.
Derek:Oops. Okay. Okay. Forty five minutes later, I'm back. I did it a bunch of times in the shower.
Derek:I'm good. I don't have to.
Reed:Okay. Good. Well, Derek, you remind me of another mythical to take another mythical character, and yet it's a quote that resonates with all of us and especially with the central dynamics is with great power comes great responsibility, and that's that's the first Spider Man trilogy. I hope they will use it again because it was very effective. But, of course, that's true, isn't it?
Reed:With great power comes great responsibility and that is true of any leader.
Derek:Can I tell an unexpected story? No. It's a spy show. Okay. Go
Reed:ahead. I'm kidding.
Derek:Okay. Okay. So so here's here's the story. So a few years ago, I was appointed the interim CEO of Edmonton Economic Development. Yes.
Derek:Our CEO had left. I was, one of the executives on the team and I was appointed as the interim CEO. I put my hand up because I thought I could help kinda keep things together while things got sorted out. That appointment was April 1. On April 14, I was it was Saturday night.
Derek:I was driving, cutting through downtown to go see my son sing in a choir. And, somebody who was texting instead of, operating a vehicle went through a red light, let red lights hit three cars including mine, spun mine around, airbag went off, totaled my car. I was fine, but, you know, it's kind of unsettling.
Reed:Of course, it
Derek:is. And it took me a couple hours to get things sorted out, and Tamaris, you know, missed the concert and came and picked me up. We're on our way home, and I got a phone call from our VP in charge of human resources to say that, one of the workers at the convention center was found in a back hallway unresponsive. Oh, boy. And she had been resuscitated and taken to the hospital.
Derek:And it's like you know, so like 09:00 at night like what do you do? So the next day, the next morning I was I went to a church committee meeting and or I was headed for one anyway. I ended up going to the hospital. And I met with this
Reed:Is she this employee? Or
Derek:Yeah. And she and she was in a coma, in a in a induced coma because they were they didn't know how long she'd not been breathing. And so a couple of her relatives were there, and so I tried to provide a little comfort to them. But just the weight of this was just overwhelming on me.
Reed:Did you know this person?
Derek:I I didn't know her. And so so I went and saw them and you know, make sure things were okay. Made some arrangements to take care of the family because they were from Northern Alberta and of humble means and, you know, made sure that they were set up okay. Got back to, to my my meeting and got another phone call that there was a suspicious package that had been found at the loading dock at the same convention center.
Reed:This is two weeks after your appointment. Right.
Derek:And the general manager of the convention center who would have been the point man on this kind of emergency was was away. And so I drove downtown and sat with the security person and the and the next senior person while the the bomb squad did its thing. And so then on Monday, we're in the office and we're worried about this woman who's in the hospital and she's still in a coma. And then we get word that one of our young convention center employees was killed in a hit and run car accident Sunday night, and she was like 17 years old. And that that one hit the news because it was a drunk driver and and, you know, that story's been out there.
Derek:So this all happened in you know, my car accident was like inconvenience at this point. And we had this just this tremendous weight of all these people that we were worried about. And I can tell you there's no glamour in being the CEO when you've got hundreds of people that, you know, you're you care about the life of one person and then when you've lost one person. Yeah. That's terrible.
Derek:And so I don't know exactly where I'm going with other than I there's a there's a tremendous sense of responsibility. Like, just a just a overwhelming sense of responsibility. I can tell you when it all kinda came together, we felt like we were gonna be okay. So I had to speak at a staff meeting about two days later, like it was already scheduled. And, so we're still this woman's still in the hospital, and we're worried about her.
Derek:And it was actually kinda cool because one of my one of my great colleagues there who's responsible for communications, you know, he said I said, you know, any advice on what I say? And he said, well, Derek, he said, you know, your your first inclination is is to go to your faith. Mhmm. And he says, and I know you're resisting that. He says, but that's the way you gotta go.
Derek:You'll know when to stop given that it's a corporate environment and it's not a church Yeah. So I I said what I felt I could say to try and bring some comfort to people. I talked about love. Mhmm. And I talked about when you love people, the inevitable result is that you feel pain when they hurt.
Reed:Wow. That's rare in a business environment to you to even reference the word love.
Derek:And so so because we're we're all hurting here, that's just a sign that we're doing it right. And then these three wonderful women that I work with accompanied by a fourth on the piano sang Stand by Me.
Reed:Oh, really? Oh.
Derek:And melted us all into puddles.
Reed:Yeah. Yeah.
Derek:So that you know, and lots of stuff happened after that in different ways and, you know, motions and strategies and board resolutions and all kinds of stuff. But in my mind, that experience for me was just like demonstrating the weight of leadership. And the only way to bear that, I think, is to have done some work on your character before you have to step into that.
Reed:I agree. I think that's very wise. I remember when I was well, this is too long a story to get into, but I was an artistic director in a theater in The States. And the Saturday before we were to open a show, we were doing our tech rehearsal and one of the actors, one of the main actors, dropped dead on the stage in rehearsal. Oh my goodness, Reid.
Reed:Yeah. And that immediately put us into a different perspective. There is an old adage in my business that the show must go on, and I had to contradict it and say, that's ridiculous. This show was canceled. And I had to find something new to put in its place, but first, we have to deal with the people and the cast and inevitable news.
Reed:And I remember that as one of the great tests of my own life, that particular episode. I wasn't wasn't about me, of course.
Derek:Well, Reid, just tell me a little bit more about where you got what you drew from to do what you needed to do in that situation.
Reed:I made a list of all the things that needed to be done. First, I spoke to the cast and who were rattled. I mean, it happened right in front of them. And there were some updates because he wasn't declared dead until he was actually with the paramedics in the ambulance going to the hospital. And we all hoped that it would be different news, you know.
Reed:But there was obviously no point in opening a show just because we had it on the schedule, Even if we were in financial straits, which we were. Even if we had a large advance of people wanting to see that particular show with these particular people, well, I'm sorry. Sometimes you can't get what you want. And that was true for all of us. None of us wanted this conclusion that happened.
Reed:In addition, the person that died was the director's partner. So there were a lot of levels that we had to negotiate. And I had a lot of pressure from my board. Okay. How are we going to survive this financially?
Reed:And there were a lot of things to deal with. So we met that day looking for a lot of solutions. But like any other challenge that you're discussing, we go on and we with care for the people. I hope that's what gleaning from your story is appropriate for the is the appropriate lesson because I'm learning so much about how a good leadership really reflects how you treated people and how I treasure my time as that particular theater's artistic director, as difficult as it was, because I met good people who that means a lot to me. I appreciate you sharing your stories.
Derek:Well, Reed, it it does it does emphasize the point then that there's no technique, there's no personality, there's no, bad motives or bad way of manipulating people that can get you through one of those things. It all has to come from being a good person who loves people. That's it. That's I think so.
Derek:That's very impressive. Am I am a little bit astonished and I'm and very grateful that you used the word love in a business perspective. I think that's remarkable. Know, Essential Dynamics is not so much a philosophy as it is a perspective. I think of it as glasses, something I'm looking I put on, I see things better because of what you've been able to outline.
Reed:So I thank you for your work, Derek Hudson. Where can people reach you?
Derek:Derekhudson.ca is the best way to find me.
Reed:Great. I hope that they will and I hope that they will tell us what they think of our work here on the podcast and also what they think of the things that we're talking about. And on behalf of Derek Hudson, my name is Reed McColm, and our terrific engineer is Bryn Griffiths. And until next time, consider your quest.