Accessible Disruption - Strategy Table

Anthony Vade: [00:00:00] Tahira, are you up for this? Absolutely. Okay, so we're gonna do a similar approach to your fantastic interview of me.
Tahira Endean: It was very much lessons in really lessons in resilience and adaptation.
Podcast Host: The world is changing. For most human beings, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address. Whether you are a startup working on agile processes or a mature organization, navigating change within existing complex structures, the mindset and skills to adapt has never been more vital. The team from the strategy table want to help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management, helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible to everyone.
This is accessible disruption.[00:01:00]
Anthony Vade: Welcome everybody to another episode of. Accessible disruption. If you caught the last episode, you would've heard the hero's interview of me, Anthony. Hey everyone. Anthony's back where we explored a bit of my background. Now I'm excited to turn the microphone around. And ask some similar questions of Tahira Tahira.
Are you up for this? Absolutely. Okay. So we're gonna do a similar approach to your fantastic interview of me, and we're going to jump straight into understanding a bit of your. Background now, not professional background. That stuff's great. We'll get to that. But I'd love to start with what's some elements of perhaps your childhood and your upbringing that led to you being a member of the strategy table, and how did that growing up influence you?
Tahira Endean: Well, I was [00:02:00] born in a place that's now called Haida Gwaii, uh, way out on the west coast of British Columbia. And we lived there from the time I was born until just before I started kindergarten. My dad was a logger and a fisherman. My mom was a mom. She was trained as a teacher, but wasn't, she was busy with us at that point in time.
My supply boat came twice a year to the Queen Charlottes. So anything that you were eating, you were growing it, or you were fishing it, you were, you weren't going to a store to buy a lot of your things that you might need on a regular basis. You know, milk was powdered. My mom baked bread. And that really taught you a lot of resilience.
So, and my god, my mother, what a saint. Like literally, can you imagine having a two and a 3-year-old literally in life jackets tied onto a fishing boat, you know, while you're out trawling for a thousand pounds of fish that are gonna go to the cannery because you also have to be crew and mother that day.
And you know, what an [00:03:00] incredible experience. You know, we didn't have toys, we had any toys that we had. Were what would fit on a shelf that was six inches wide. And as long as our bunk, so about less than four feet. 'cause we were little, we didn't need a lot of space to sleep. Um, and, you know, eventually we moved to Y Hewlett and then up into Northern British Columbia as I went through school.
But you know, for, by the time that we were 10 and we were moving again this time to Calgary, we said, you know, gosh, mom and dad, we're not gonna make any friends here. Because there's no point every time that we make friends, we just move. We're just only gonna be each other's friends from now on. So of course that didn't last.
Of course, you know, we went to school and we made friends and did all of those things, and it was very much lessons in, really lessons in resilience and adaptation. We also had a lot of lessons. In learning. So in the time that we lived in Northern British Columbia, my dad worked for the Workers' [00:04:00] Compensation Board as a safety officer, and my mom was a teacher, so she became a teacher on call.
She didn't have a full-time job, but she went back to school and she did all of her specialty training to become a librarian. So. Every time that we would open a cupboard, she would leave herself little flashcard notes inside of every cupboard in the house to memorize the Dewey Decimal system. And she also did all of her education to become a special ed teacher.
So she was the teacher on call who would go into the classrooms with not just a DHD, but you know, autism and others. Some in some cases. Depending on the school, some very severe learning disabilities. So that was something that we became very familiar with and empathetic to as children because we were taught that, you know, as you said, it's just your brain biology and that there's so many exceptional things that come out of people that we.
Might have looked at as being different. You know, I remember being in [00:05:00] grade three and we had two deaf children in our school, so we all learned a SL and I can still sing Twinkle, twinkle Little Star in sign language. So I think that there are definitely things that happen in our lives that sometimes we forget about.
That we then need to go back and, you know, figure out how they're are, are just ingrained in our value system and to take those forward into the next stages of our life.
Anthony Vade: I think we're gonna have to have an episode where we interview our mothers. That would be amazing because my mother actually followed the same path and.
To the extent of librarian, well, she did it the opposite way. She did special ed and then went into the library after that. But I'm, I'm wondering, you jumped through a several different communities and scale and scope of cultures. How was it going from a small isolate? Well. Relatively isolated community then into Calgary.
And sort of can you elaborate a little bit more on, on how you had to adjust your approach out, you know, [00:06:00] outside of making friends? So in
Tahira Endean: between those things, you know, we went from the Queen Charlottes to Cullet, to Dawson Creek and Prince George. And let me tell you, when you move at, you know, an early sort of teen tween age, um.
To Calgary as a pretty big city, you couldn't possibly be any nerdier or out of touch with what a big city life is like. And so to enter grade seven there, which was junior high. So everybody at that time is, you know, left to elementary school. And so six or seven schools, you know, coalesce into one junior high.
And you're still the uncool kid ever was really interesting. So it's just, you know, something that I thought was like my favorite shirt was just like, oh, where'd that come from? And, you know, so I really faced all of those, uh, hurdles of learning how to. Being not the nerdiest kid, it didn't help that, you know, you talk about your, you know, A DHD and you know, different neurological differences.
[00:07:00] I was in the let's, it is the gifted, it was the gifted program. So basically it just means that I was exceptional at reading. And pretty good at writing. I still really can't do algebra. My, probably my superpower is connecting dots and connecting ideas and connecting people to ideas. And what makes me really good at being the head of program for IMEX is that I see patterns in different ways as you do so.
Um, because it wasn't dyslexic doesn't mean that it didn't have its own limitations. And opportunities. So I think that when we get into rooms full of people, you know, we look at their external, you know, what they look like on the outside, how they dress, maybe how their hair is, um, all of those other things that go along with those very.
Quick first impressions, and it's not until you take the time to dig a little bit deeper and to look beyond that, [00:08:00] that people actually get both quite interesting and where you find those places of more commonalities. And I think that those are also really important lessons that we have to take forward as well.
So it was a challenge for sure.
Anthony Vade: Fascinating. I'd like you to grow up a little bit. Tell me a little bit about how those elements have sort of led to your working life and, and, and how are you leveraging some of those unique experiences?
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Anthony Vade: I had like you to grow up a a little bit. Tell me a little bit about how those elements have sort of led to your working life and, and, and, and how you're leveraging some of those unique experiences today.
Tahira Endean: Well, let's get into some more change management. So, you know, when I was six years old, my dad gave me a little hairdressing doll.
And that led me to wanting to be a hairstylist more than I wanted to do anything in life. And in high school I took beauty culture like Frenchy in Greece and I graduated as a fully licensed hairstylist just as well because by that time my parents were divorced and I moved out to live on my own when I was 17.
And so doing all of that was also, you know, again, a big change. You know, really starting a, I was. You know, a fully functioning adult before my 18th birthday and a working hairstylist, and I loved it. It was [00:11:00] amazing. I still am the master of small talk because of years and years of meeting clients. You know, I accelerated through that career quite quickly.
I, you know, was managing the salon. By the time I was 21, I was working as a, as a educator for a hair color company, Goldwell. At the time, I was loving everything that I was doing. It was amazing. And around the time I was 24, 25, I started to have a lot of problems working because it was very difficult to hold my arms above my head, which is.
Really a requirement for being a hairstylist. And I was going for a lot of physiotherapy trying to figure out what was wrong. And it turned out well, you have brain biology. I had body biology, so I was born with two extra ribs, and your first ribs are right under your collarbone. And what that meant in my case is I had also built up a lot of muscle around that area.
You know, I was weightlifting, I was hairstyling. I was doing all of the things that would accelerate that problem to its nth [00:12:00] degree. And so I had to have two very major surgeries. And the surgeon at the end of it said, okay, this is great. You know, super successful, but you'll never cut hair again. And I went home and I cried.
For a couple of days. It was quite tragic and my then boyfriend said, oh, you know, it's okay. We'll get through this together. You know, I love you. And my literal response was, it doesn't matter. So, which wasn't exactly what he was hoping to hear when he was offering support. It turns out it worked out. So we've been together for about 35 years now.
So I had to go back to school and do something. And at that time in Camloops, they had just launched an event and convention management diploma and I thought, that sounds so glamorous. That's what I'm gonna do next. And so I went to school and did an event and convention management diploma. And so once again, we were [00:13:00] uprooted because of course there's not a lot of work for that in Camloops.
And Greg had gone from. Owning an autobody shop, which he had done his whole life to selling that business and going back to school. But he was at BCIT in Vancouver. So of course I moved to Vancouver to be closer to him, which was the right choice. I had a practicum, which was with Claire Smith at the Vancouver Convention Center, where I planned the second annual partners in professional planning.
By planning, I mean, they handed me a big box with a hundred registration forms, a bunch of checks, and sent me off to meet with Debbie and Joanna, um, to learn about the logistics. And it was three and a half weeks before the event had to happen. I'd never planned an event in my life. I. Apparently did a good job because Debbie and Joanna hired me and I worked in what was would now be called a PCO, but in a meeting planning company that doesn't exist anymore, but for eight years and [00:14:00] then went on to be, be wanting to be a bit more creative and ended up working at R Indigo and a whole series of other places, incentive Hoses, DMCs.
At Quick Mobile for a little beat planning a the BC Tech Summit, um, which was a conference run by the government, which we grew over three years from 2,500 to 8,500. So I've had lots of career change as well, and some of it's been upward mobility. I. As you call it. And some of it has been lateral changes because I wanted to learn a new skill.
So for example, when I went to Quick Mobile, you know, it was hyper-focused on designing events for a technology company, but also providing a lot of support to our industry as we sponsored a lot of mobile apps through that time. So IRF, you know, M-P-I-P-C-M-A, and on and on and on. So really got to know.
Our industry and event tech really well before I went on to build the tech summit, which then exploded from not just event technology, but [00:15:00] every technology in British Columbia. And that was a blast, you know, so going out to UBC and seeing an Adam being split and, you know, things that you just don't get to do in a normal day.
Well, actively learning about every possible industry you could learn about, um, in a. Hyper-focused short period of time. Eventually, I took a little break after that and growing that, and then became the head of events for site, which was an amazing job in 2019, and then continued to be interesting as I was part of the executive for one event industry association through the pandemic, and we maintained, I think 81% of our membership during that time by using every digital tool and every human tool that we.
Could possibly rustle up to keep people engaged until we were able to return to work, which was almost two years later as we all lived through. Um, it's been nothing but change. On top of change. On top of change but's just as well. I had [00:16:00] that early grounding.
Anthony Vade: That is a fascinating example of navigating change over a lifetime.
Something else I know about you that I'd love to explore a bit more. During that troubling pandemic time, you fully embraced our shared passion for lifelong learning and continuous improvement, and you went back to school. Can you share a little bit about what led you to going back to school, what you learned there, and how that is gonna help us out a lot at Strategy Table.
Tahira Endean: Well, certainly what I bring is, you know, more than three decades of working with organizations as they went through change. So whether it was a national sales conference or leadership retreats or, you know, we continued to set the stage by designing. Engaging environments that would support the change.
So I always look at organizations as the leadership being the sort of the social architects of an organization leading the culture, deciding, you know, how things should move [00:17:00] forward. And especially on the events level, what we do is, you know, we're the engineers who are driving what all of the things that are gonna help to support those changes through one or multiple events during a time.
And so I've had the very close up views into, as you have into many organizations who are. Going through change and supporting that. And so doing my Master's in Creativity and Change leadership was just that next extension of what interests me and what interested me was understanding how to be the best facilitator of those kinds of change and to be able to.
Have different methodologies that were available to support change, while also really deeply understanding how humans respond in live events. Whether that live event is a 10 person workshop or a, you know, a 8,000 person event. There's some really fundamental things that we've learned along the way [00:18:00] that are going to support us being.
Able to successfully help other people through change.
Anthony Vade: I feel like we're just scratching the surface in both of our interviews. And the good news for the listeners out there is if you want to hear an extended version of both of these interviews and we've got one, another one coming up very soon, you can head to strategy table.co.
To hear the extended versions in our member community. We've got another episode coming up and we're gonna hear about Ryan Hill, the third leg to our three-legged stool. Is that accurate? Yeah. And we've got some other change guides coming up who are part of Strategies tables extended team that help in specialist areas.
So we encourage you to head on over to strategy table.co sign up to hear that extended version. But we'll certainly check you out on the next episode. Thank you for Tiara for sharing. Thank you,
Tahira Endean: Anthony.
Podcast Host: That was fun. [00:19:00] Accessible Disruption is written and spoken by Tahira and Dean Ryan Hill and Anthony Vade.
All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Podcast production by Experience Design Change, Inc. An association with the change lead network. Find more information@strategytable.co.