May 2025

  • Big C

    This week, Julia, Henry, and I are off on vacation to Vienna and Barcelona in celebration of my mother-in-law Catherine’s (aka ‘Big C’) retirement and 60th birthday. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have Catherine as my MIL; I genuinely enjoy spending time with her, and we have always gotten along splendidly. Our shared love of Julia, and of having a good time, gave us a solid foundation to build on.

    Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time with Catherine and learned a great deal. She has a unique ability to get along with and immediately befriend everyone without restraining her strong opinions on many subjects. That is a rare and nuanced skill, and she’s mastered it. Additionally, I give credit to Catherine for making me a more empathetic person and holding less judgement than I might have ten years ago; “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”, as she says.

    Catherine has always seemed keenly aware of her own mortality and placed a high value on the pursuit of a good time and living in the moment; life is short and she takes advantage. I have always respected that and look forward to continued good family times.

  • Reference calls

    I’ve found recruiting managers have varying views on reference calls: proponents swear they provide insight into making the right hire and critics believe a reference shared by a potential candidate is almost certainly going to be a sugar-coated positive call and can’t be relied upon.

    Many years ago, Amin introduced me to a variant of the reference call, which I have found to be consistently high value: the post-hire reference call or maybe better described as the “set up for success” call. This involves asking a HIRED candidate (i.e., post job offer signed) for 2 references, ideally their most recent bosses. I’ve done this for every senior (VP) level hire we’ve made for the past six years, and it’s been a unanimously positive experience.

    A “set up for success” call begins by stablishing with the reference that the candidate has already been hired and anything shared will have zero impact on their prospects of joining the company. This takes away the fear of negatively impacting a former direct report’s career opportunity, which most people don’t want to negatively influence, regardless of whether they like them or not. Instead, you explicitly state your intent to set this person up for success and seek feedback on their strengths, opportunities for improvement, and look to better understand how to manage them from someone who has already had that opportunity.

    Most former bosses want to help their ex-employees, particularly at the executive level. As a result, I have found people particularly forthright about watch outs and strengths, which genuinely help set someone up for success as part of their onboarding. Even now, looking back at notes from previous calls I’ve participated in, I believe much of what was shared reflected accurately upon finally working with those individuals. Onboarding new employees is a critical determinant of their ability to be successful and a ‘set up for success’ call is an excellent tool to incorporate in the process.

  • Marathon

    Last week, I ran the Toronto marathon, and Julia ran the half-marathon. It was a big success all around; I felt great and cut almost 30 minutes off my last run and Julia achieved her goal of beating my half marathon PR, thus taking the Owen Cord family crown.

    I choose to rawdog my races; no headphones. One of my favourite parts of a race is taking in the bystanders, reading the signs, and seeing the festivities along the course. There are the common, dad-jokey generic ones:

    • “You paid for this!”
    • “All this for a banana?!”
    • “Today, you’re allowed to finish fast”
    • “Whine now, wine later”
    • “The pain is temporary, the Strava lasts forever”
    • “You run better than the government”
    • “You’re still faster than the TTC”
    • “Rats don’t run the city, you do!”
    • “Run if you think I’m sexy”
    • “I trained for months to hold this sign”

    And then some unique ones, which I always appreciate:

    • “Don’t worry, if you fail your run here, you can always run again in Alberta!”
    • “Run like your mama flew in from Mexico to watch you!”
    • “[name] hurry up, I’m hungry”
    • “Anything to avoid therapy”

    The last time I ran a marathon was pre-Henry and I underestimated the time commitment involved; it was a lot, especially the last 6 weeks leading up to the race. Many other things took a back seat. I’m fortunate to have a supportive partner in Julia or the training schedule wouldn’t have been possible. I love running but not enough to make it such a priority in my life right now and so I’ll be taking a break for the foreseeable future.