Laughing Out Loud And Other Inuit Values To Keep Your Company From Chillin' Out

“We try to hire local Inuit, but they have little education and so it’s hard for us to give them anything but the most menial jobs,” said the mining engineer sitting next to me on the flight from Yellowknife to Cambridge Bay, a small Inuit community on the edge of the Arctic Circle. It’s a familiar story and makes sense on one level since seventy-five percent of Inuit do not graduate high school. On another level though, that engineer couldn’t have been more wrong.

I first visited Nunavut in 2006. I had spent twenty years as investment analyst and portfolio manager, assessing companies for their investment potential. Others told me that I was good at it, but in the wake of the Enron and Worldcom scandals, I became aware that I was losing a grip on my craft. As an outsider, I could perform all the sophisticated and complex financial analysis in the world, but if a company had lost touch with it’s fundamental human values, no amount of number crunching would help me in the long run. I had no techniques to protect against moral bankruptcy. So, I decided to jump ship before it got worse – and it did.

For a complete change, I went to Nunavut, for reasons that are still not totally clear to me. I’ve returned many times and through my interactions with and observations of Inuit, I have grown to appreciate the power of Inuit Qaujimajauqangit or IQ (an Inuktitut phrase meaning “knowledge, which has long been known”) - a formal set of rules that guide and influence ethical behavior of Inuit, even today. I must qualify this by saying that I’m neither a scholar of nor an expert in this ancient system, but merely an observer.

Modern society appears to be quickly taking over in most Inuit communities. But, behind the ubiquitous satellite dishes, cell phones, SUVs, junk food and MP3 players, is a culture that remains rich in tradition, with survival and subsistence strategies that would make many a management consultant drool.

Whether it is society as a whole or a corporation that is an integral part of that society, survival is a cultural issue and more specifically, the human values inherent in a culture will ultimately determine its fate.

In my experience as an analyst, many companies fail in the long run because they somehow lose a grip on some very basic human values that defined them at the outset. The last couple of years have provided numerous examples of this phenomenon. It doesn’t matter how good your product is or how smart your people are, if your employees cannot relate to each other on a basic, civilized human level, the company is ultimately doomed.

Inuit have survived and will continue to do so because their values are such a stable, unquestionable and unconscious part of everyday life. For sure, they may have more access to modern conveniences today and are experiencing the societal problems associated with this, but how Inuit respond to each other on a human level has not changed in centuries.

The point here is, everything evolves, but human values should remain stable and at the core of any society, including a corporate society. The problem with many companies is that as the business model changes and evolves over time, so do the values. Somewhere in the chase for quarterly earnings performance and growth, human values get diluted or lost completely and when this happens, the resulting behavior of corporations can have a devastating effect on the societies in which they operate.

The drum used in traditional Inuit drum dancing is a symbolic instrument. The centre of the drum represents Inuit values. The strength of these values in turn, shapes the strength of the people. Values influence learning mechanisms and also define what Inuit view as important knowledge to pass from one generation to another (which is depicted in their traditional songs). Surrounding the centre of the drum are the determinants of health, well-being and community conditions that impact learning. These factors define the collective strength of Inuit and are seen as having an overall effect on the learning potential of individuals.

Every company should have its own version of the drum. The values that have sculptured Inuit psyches for two thousand years can be applied to any corporate entity today. They act as an “archetype” in a purely Jungian sense – a collectively inherited unconscious pattern of thought that can be applied to any individual.

Admittedly, it is now a cliché to say that a company’s assets go up and down with the elevator. What is not so banal is to say that those same assets are intrinsically linked to the survival of a company via a system of very basic human values. Values are at the core of Inuit culture and should be at the core of any culture, corporate or otherwise. Humans are humans, regardless of whether they live in the Arctic or Wall Street.

Respecting elders. In Inuit communities, the oldest person is always the most important. In the old days, incompetent people did not live to an old age. Elders, by definition, were held in high esteem because they had lived a long time, thus proving their competence. Elders not only have more life experience, but are also repositories of knowledge accumulated over many generations. For these very practical reasons, Inuit look to their elders for leadership.

Though many companies today embrace some form of mentoring program, it tends to be based on hierarchy rather than experience. For example, a 40-year old superstar Vice President might become a mentor to a 45-year old employee somewhere down the corporate ladder. It is rare that age is viewed as an asset in and of itself within a corporation, although at the board level, it is often the case that counsel comes from retired executives of age, sometimes from completely unrelated industries. Why should only the very top-level management have access to elders? Why can’t advisory committees comprised of elders with appropriate experience be set up to serve middle management and lower? Many retirees with valuable expertise and experience would welcome the opportunity to play the role of coach for one or two days a month. I know someone who founded an investment bank and maintained an office at his company well after his official retirement date. He literally just hung out there for a couple of days a week and consulted with anyone who cared to walk into his office, regardless of rank. He was regarded as one of the firm’s greatest assets and many senior executives in the investment business today owe their careers to his wise counsel.

In some aboriginal communities, it is said that when an elderly person dies, a whole library of knowledge dies with them. Why do companies choose to retire that library of knowledge before it is absolutely necessary? They should do more to harness this collective intelligence.

Making decisions through consensus and discussion. Most aboriginal cultures, including Inuit, embrace the concept of the “sacred circle”. If there is a problem to be solved, any member of a community regardless of age, gender or status can elect to join the circle. A rock is passed around and the person holding the rock states his or her views on the issue at hand. There’s no judgment, no disagreement, no discussion – it just is. The rock is passed around the circle until all that can be said about an issue has been said and the solution to the problem becomes clear and self-evident.

The main message here is that everyone’s viewpoint is important and valid, there is no intellectual hierarchy involved in the outcome and decisions are not forced, but arise as a result of the process. In essence, it’s the process that solves the problem, not an individual.

I’ve experienced corporate environments that try to engage in this type of collective decision-making, but it’s often flawed. Meetings are called, opinions gathered and the boss then makes a decision, usually too quickly. Rarely are discussions exhausted and participants often engage in what behavioral psychologists call confirmation bias – a tendency to cognitively overweight confirming evidence and underweight disconfirming evidence.

The sacred circle requires faith and trust in the process. It also requires patience and time - the real or metaphorical rock has to be circulated until a solution becomes self-evident. Like the human body, the process has its own natural rhythm and is not governed by the clock. If you allow the process to unfold naturally, you will find that the resulting solution has a different quality to it. The decisions that ensue carry more of a collective responsibility and are free of the competitive tension that is often evident in regular corporate decision-making processes.

Being Innovative and resourceful. At one time, everything the Inuit needed to survive – food, clothing, and shelter - came from the land. Needless to say, they had to be extremely innovative and resourceful. If you’re ever lucky enough to camp, hunt and fish with Inuit elders, you will marvel at their creativity and ability to do so much with so little. But, these abilities seem to have their root in the concept of serving others. In essence, the more innovative and resourceful a person is, the more they can give to others. To describe this better, I’ll borrow a Buddhist term called right effort, albeit within an Inuit context.

Today, youth-elder camps are held throughout Nunavut to teach kids traditional Inuit survival skills. An unintended consequence of this is that Inuit youth begin to understand the concept of right effort - always doing your best with whatever resources are available to provide for family and community.

Companies try to analyze effort by measuring productivity or more recently a concept called return on effort. But, this is like writing down an improvised piece of music after it has been played. It may be a useful analytical tool, but it fails to capture the mental energy that produced the music in the first place.

Effort is about mental energy and right effort is about creating environments that make people “want” to do things rather than “having” to do them. We have all heard of leaders who inspire their teams to work above and beyond what is expected of them. A common thread in leadership research is that good leaders always lead by example. This phenomenon is played out in interactions between Inuit elders and youth. Inuit elders always show and rarely tell.

Another important aspect of right effort is a sense of “giving”. The purpose of hunting in Inuit society is to provide for family and community. Even today, many Inuit communities have communal meat caches that anyone can access. If a person hunts, he takes only what he needs for his family and shares the rest with the community. The concept of sharing is so ingrained in the Inuit psyche that once I gave a chocolate bar to an Inuk kid at the airport and he broke it into five perfectly equal portions and shared it with his four friends. So, the point is, when Inuit do something, they do it for others as well as for themselves. The consequence of being innovative and resourceful is that it results in being able to give more to others. It is this sense of giving that motivates young people to want to learn traditional skills and ultimately work for the benefit of their communities (unfortunately, this has not yet been recognized in the school curriculum).

In a corporate context, Right effort at the employee level should, in theory, be inextricably linked to return on investment at the enterprise level.

Working together for a common cause. What I have observed about modern Inuit is that there is little difference in their behavior inside and outside of the workplace. Of course, there are exceptions and “office politics” do exist, but by and large, the same values hold true inside the workplace as they do out. Much of this has to do with the size of the communities, which are still relatively small - less than 1,000 people in most cases. In other words, you generally have to live with the people you work with.

But, there’s something more to it than that. On the whole, Inuit are not “measurers” by nature. In “modern” society, most human interactions are a chance to engage in some form of measurement. We measure whether someone is good-looking, smart, wealthy, educated, useful etc. We have become so good at it that it’s not even a conscious process anymore - we have already decided whether a person “measures up” within the first few seconds of meeting them.

In traditional Inuit societies, if you were part of a functioning community, that was all the qualification you needed. Everyone was welcome and included, because everyone had a part to play in the community as whole. The harsh Arctic environment took care of the measurement part – if you didn’t perform, you simply didn’t survive.

In the modern workplace, Inuit assume that if you’re there, then you’re part of the community. There is little evidence of clique or silo mentality, where groups are formed around some predetermined qualification, measurement or in some cases, emotional insecurity. The community works together as a whole and everyone has a valid opinion, which carries equal weight in the decision-making process. The community is always more important than the individual. The whole is always more than the sum of the parts.

Developing skills through practice, experimentation and action. There are some things that just cannot be rushed and some skills only elders can possess. Every Inuit youth knows and understands this. Inuit also seem to intuitively understand that experience has its roots in experiment. Watching, learning, experimenting, making mistakes and celebrating small successes are at the heart of traditional Inuit learning methods.

It’s fascinating to watch Inuit elders teach traditional tool-making skills to young people. It’s a very quiet process - little is said, but much is shown. Additionally, everyone is welcome to try, there’s an implicit understanding that learning has its own natural rhythm and is a life-long process.

Today, there is much angst in corporate HR departments about how to deal with the restlessness, impatience and general sense of entitlement of the Millennial Generation (those born after 1981). Many companies spend large amounts of money training these young employees only to find that they will jump ship without blinking an eye, leaving a company with little or nothing to show for its investment. Companies need to figure out how to deal with this in order to maximize their “Return on Investment in Millennials (ROIM)”.

Much has been written on how to get the best out of Millennials. Ironically, what is most striking about this research is that it illustrates that this demographic cohort is inherently a values-based generation. It’s a generation that was raised with a strong sense of community (albeit a digital one) and uncompromising social ideals (it has the highest volunteer rates in history).

During my visits to Nunavut, I have worked a lot with Inuit youth. If you ask a group of Inuit teenagers to draw their ideal man or women, they invariably draw a facsimile of their grandparents. When pressed to explain their drawings, it appears that it’s not so much the personification of their grandparents they idealize, but rather the values they perceive are inherent in this generation. In other words, they are reacting to an archetypal quality of that generation.

I’ve also tried this exercise on youth living in the south from a variety of cultures and nationalities. Even when material objects, such as cars or clothes factor into their renditions, they’re often associated with deeper ideals. For example, in a recent exercise in an inner-city school in Toronto, when asked why their ideal man was wearing Hip-hop clothing, the group responded by saying that clothes represented authenticity, not fashion. Other words used to describe their drawings included integrity, honesty, warmth, imagination and friendliness.

The point here is that the millennial generation is the key to strengthening corporate values. They have a lot to offer and in return they simply ask for a sense of community, participation and recognition. They will respect and respond positively to a system that embraces all the things I’ve discussed so far. That’s why they should be listened to carefully and their opinions given equal weight in the decision-making process. In a sense, this is a nice bookend to the first value I discussed – respecting elders. Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear a group of Millennial employees give a presentation on corporate values to a Board of Directors? Would it be very different to one given by elders?

Laughing out loud. This is not really a part of the official Inuit Qaujimajauqangit, but I thought I’d include it here because it’s a trait that I notice the most when I’m with my Inuit friends. When I first visited Nunavut, I asked someone who had lived there for a while what I needed to know about the Arctic. “You need to know how to laugh” was his response. Real laughter, the type that emanates from your belly, is such a natural part of life for most Inuit that it makes you appreciate how much it has been lost in our own cultures, especially the workplace. Why is smiling and laughter regarded as a weaknesses in the workplace? To be sure, there is seriousness to business, but if the workplace can embrace other “softer” emotions, why can’t it embrace laughter too. Besides, laughter keeps you warm in so many ways.

There is a common thread running through all these values - they a deeply anti-narcissistic. Narcissism is rampant in corporations today, but to strengthen any values-based organization, people have to believe that they belong to a community in every sense of the word. Trust, integrity, honesty, inclusiveness, participation and respect will always win out over personal advancement at the expense of others. Everything Inuit do is collectively driven – unfortunately, even suicide is regarded as being for the benefit of family and community.

In the old days, Inuit hunters used materials taken from their prey for their hunting equipment. They recognized the irony of harnessing the sacred power of an animal to use against others of its species. They appropriated both the actual and the spiritual powers of predators to assist them in their hunt. To use these powers, hunters had to show the animals proper respect by taking good care of their hunting equipment. It had to be mended and kept clean and free of contamination, otherwise, a cloud of impurity surrounded the hunter, making him visible to the animals and angering Nuliajuk, the spirit who controlled access to sea mammals.

In order to thrive, companies need to recognize that values are basic survival tools. They harness all the powers necessary for a corporate society to grow and flourish responsibly. They should be looked after and kept free of contamination. Only then, will the spirit of capitalism provide access to all its riches.

If you ever feel the need to question the resilience of these traditional Inuit values, try sticking your head in the freezer for ten minutes and imagine trying to come up with coping strategies that would allow you to survive in these climatic conditions permanently. You’ll quickly realize that the only ones that make real sense are those that rely on others around you. Laughing out loud is also helpful!

Inuit Youth Have A Voice Too

The first line of the chorus from the song “Teenagers” by the band My Chemical Romance is, “Teenagers scare the living sh*t out of me.” For most of my adult life, this could have been my mantra. Quite frankly, I found teenage coolness intimidating and always dreaded or avoided interacting with them. I’m also of an age where I can barely remember the details of my own adolescence.

Today, I actually really want to be around young people. That’s been a big change for me. I’ve learned I can connect with a teenager. I never thought that would be possible until I started working with Inuit youth.

I first visited Nunavut in 2006 in search of something good. Ever since Nunavut was formed just over a decade ago, the majority of reports have been only of its socio-economic failures. Generally, when I only see bad, I know there is something good just around the corner. It didn’t take me long to find it.

Upon arrival, I met Lori Idlout. She introduced me to a stunning culture—one of gentleness, kindness and generosity. What I saw did not wholly reflect what the media portrayed.

Lori is the executive director of the Embrace Life Council (ELC), an organization dedicated to working with youth in Arctic Canada. As we have witnessed in the series of media reports on Nunavut this week, young people in the North have issues, to say the least. The ELC’s mandate is to empower these youth to act and think positively and to celebrate their life, culture, language and history.

In 2008, despite my lack of experience working with youth, I was asked to help as a photography facilitator on an Embrace Life Council initiative called “Inuusivut” (meaning “Our Way of Life”). The main focus of this project is to provide the necessary skills-based training in photography, filmmaking and leadership to enable youth to be the driving force in the visual exploration, promotion and sharing of mental health related issues. In short, two Inuk filmmakers and myself travel throughout the Territory teaching a variety of visual communication techniques to groups of kids aged between fifteen and nineteen. So far, we have trained about one hundred and twenty youth in twelve communities.

It was especially challenging for me to take on this initiative because there were many barriers that had to be broken down before I felt I could connect with Inuit teenagers. I had to earn their trust not only as an adult but also as a stranger - or Kabloonak - in their community.

We teach about fifteen kids at a time and our 7-day workshops usually begin with an introduction to camera mechanics and basic visual composition. After a day or so of playing and experimenting, the youth are ready to work on their individual projects; either a photo-essay, multi-media project or short film. The ideas are storyboarded and scripted as best they can, shot and then edited to final production using state-of-the-art equipment. At the end of the week, we have a public showing where family and friends are invited and the kids get to stand up in front of an audience to introduce their projects. For most Inuit teenagers who are naturally extremely shy and quiet, this can be a daunting task.

The kid’s projects are mixed and always interesting. They sometimes tackle difficult subjects such as sniffing, bullying, the environment and those memorable and pesky adolescent relationships - subjects that are almost impossible for them to verbalize, but somehow come alive when cameras are put in their hands. The projects also seem to have an interesting mix of Northern and Southern sensibilities, often captured in their use of both English and Inuktitut languages – or Inuklish as we call it.

I’ve come to believe that art is part of an Inuk kid’s DNA. The level of artistic and visual acuity is nothing short of astonishing. When we show them what they’re capable of, it has a very positive effect on their well-being and mental health. Getting them involved in documenting their community not only encourages active participation, but it also turns the focus from death to life. Through this kind of communication process and participation, we hope that the youth will not get sucked into the funk that creates a cycle of failure, which in the worst of cases, leads to substance abuse and all too often, suicide.

John Ralston Saul, in his book “A Fair Country”, states that “a successful Northern strategy means Northern communities made stronger in a Northern way, which means approaches not imitative of Southern urban beliefs, but approaches naturally integrated as a blend of old and new Northern ways.” From my viewpoint, the first place to start with such a strategy is with Inuit youth.

At one of our public showings in Rankin Inlet, I was asked to say a few words. I told everyone that I had started the week teaching basic photography and ended the week trying to replicate some of the photographs taken by the students. I also wanted to say that nowadays, the only thing that scares the living sh*t out of me about teenagers is their immense creative potential and raw intelligence. But I didn’t think that would translate well into Inuktitut.

Time Flies

Cannot believe how long it is since I last blogged. So much has happened in my life that I don't know where to start and won't, but will vow to post thoughts and sketches from my camera on a more regular basis from now on.