On our shared purpose

Last week marked my third anniversary at Queen’s. Time flies, even in a pandemic. As I am the reflective sort, I have been thinking about why I am here. I have also been thinking about what has changed during that time and what has stayed the same. The change has been immense – new people, new departments, new goals, and, in many areas, new leadership. Together, we have adapted to pandemic rules – working from bedrooms, kitchens, basements, and dens, and, if anything, doing more than we did in the Before Times.

Lately, at Advancement Leadership Team (ALT), we have been talking about how much we do across Advancement and what we can do to regulate the work so that it doesn’t become overwhelming. I don’t think we have perfect answers yet, even though we have deferred a few projects and tried to reduce efforts against others. We are, all of us together across Advancement, an ambitious lot and we have trouble letting things slide off the table, especially when we believe we need those things to push forward.

Shakespeare uses the character Guildenstern to remind Hamlet, and us, that “the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.” It’s an interesting metaphor: ambition is not a reflection of our dreams but an immutable result of them. Everything has a shadow (OK, not Peter Pan – but he was desperately trying to find his). We have dreams in Advancement. They are laid out in Forward, Together, our strategic plan. But what do our ambitions look like?

In my view, our ambitions are still too fractured, too scattered, perhaps too disparate. In the common language of business, we are still too “siloed” to allow us to move forward, together in the way we would like to. This may be inevitable in an organization such as ours, where authority is dispersed widely, and forward planning happens in many places at the same time. However, we are going to keep trying. This year, for example, we are going to create our annual plan in a new way. Instead of trying to reconcile departmental plans created in isolation, we will attempt to plan by functional area, bringing together people from across Advancement in a cross-functional way. The hope is that these plans will inform our departmental objectives and we will be more aligned and more purposeful from the start of the fiscal year. 

This notion of shared purpose reminds me of the legendary story – almost certainly an urban legend – of Kennedy’s visit to NASA in the early 1960s. As the story goes – there are many versions – the president asked a custodian what his role at NASA was. The man replied, “I am here to put a man on the moon.” He cleaned so the rocket scientists didn’t have to, so they could concentrate on their part of the mission. This story, true or not, became the defining myth at NASA, which became known for a culture of shared purpose. Everyone thought of themselves as, and was treated like, an equal contributor to their shared purpose.

Our shared purpose in Advancement is defined in our mission statement: To foster relationships that advance Queen’s and contribute to a better world. Ultimately, we do this by raising money to create impact. That’s why I like to say that we all raise funds here in Advancement, whether we solicit donors directly or do any of the countless other jobs that lead to those solicitations. And that – the notion that we can all play a part in fundraising, and that I can help others as they play their parts – is exactly why I am here.

A collaborative success

By Alex Beshara

"If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'..."

The objective was simple. Accelerate biographic form updates from our alumni community after being stifled to 10 updates after 300 phone calls. A cross-collaborative effort developed an email and targeted LinkedIn campaign that was buoyed by a LinkedIn Learning incentive. This campaign secured 3,800 biographic updates in a single month. 

Times a-changin'. And so did we. Congrats to all those involved.

With love, from Queen's

In honour of Valentine’s Day, we surprised some alumni couples with framed yearbook photos to celebrate their love stories. 

One of these couples is Anna Vanderlaan (ArtSci '12, MSc '14) and Luke Oribine (Sci '13). They shared that they likely passed each other on campus a hundred times – cutting through the ARC or studying in the basement of Douglas – before their love story began. They are now engaged and said, “You can bet there will be an Oil Thigh at our wedding this summer!”

We shared their story on social media on Valentine’s Day to great response, hearing from many other Queen’s couples about their own love stories.

Thank you to our Development and Annual Giving partners for submitting names and to Marnie Girard for turning her home into a production warehouse all in the name of love!

Employee Spotlight

The Employee Spotlight celebrates the arrival of our new and existing staff by profiling responses they share through a fun and informal survey that will help us get to know them better. Be sure to review these profiles and use these fun facts and tidbits to find commonalities, embrace differences and spark a conversation.

This week’s feature includes:

Adam Say is in the position of Senior Development Officer in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Learn more about Adam and their favourite hobbies.
 

Jobs with Advancement

We need your recruitment help. Know great talent that would be a good addition to our team? If so, please promote the vacancies below with your networks and let’s find some amazing new team members.

Applications (including a cover letter and résumé) must be submitted through CareerQ. For additional information on this posting, please reach out to either Carla Ferreira Rodrigues or the hiring manager for the position you are interested in.