Thoughts From the Dock
On designing for collective good (and why that still feels possible in a country like Canada)
(Editor's Note: This post was originally published on July 1, 2025.)
I'm writing this from the family cottage, where I've spent basically every summer of my entire life. It's the kind of place that forces you to slow down. You lose track of your laptop charger. You eat chips for dinner. You start thinking more clearly, not because you're trying, but because there's finally space to.
I don't come up here to think about work. But some things still follow me – the patterns I keep seeing, the questions that don't quite let go. And lately, one of them is this: how do we actually build toward the kind of future we say we want?
Being Canadian shaped how I think about this. It's given me a quiet belief that public good isn't something we “stand for,” it's something we structure for.
These aren't abstract principles – they're the patterns I see working in practice:
5 things I've learned about building collective good in Canada
Structure matters more than statements. If your values aren't reinforced in your org chart, your incentives, or your decision making processes, they'll fall apart under pressure. Start there.
Alignment isn't the same as consensus. Avoiding conflict isn't the same as being on the same page. Build systems that surface tension early – especially if your team or board tends to defer hard conversations.
Governance is a design decision. Who gets to weigh in, how decisions get made, what's measured and reported – these are strategic choices, not admin work. Make them on purpose.
Operationalize care. Care isn’t just about being nice – it’s how your systems actually treat people. How you onboard new hires, give feedback, handle mistakes, or repair trust all send a message about what you really value.
Design for trust before it's tested. If you only start thinking about trust when things go sideways, it's already too late. Bake it into how you build, not just how you respond.
This isn't really a Canada Day post – it's more a reminder that collective good is still possible, if we design like we mean it. Canada's one of the few places we can get that right, if we don't let the systems quietly erode.
That belief shaped how I work, and it's why I keep coming back to these questions at the lake. If we want to hold onto collective good, we need to design like it.
And maybe take our laptops to the dock a little more often.
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