Opinion: Who gets a seat at the table?

Every day, we make decisions that will shape Calgary’s future. The question is: who gets a seat at the table?

In my role at the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary, I spend every day with next-generation leaders — creators, builders, entrepreneurs — who want to change the world. And I keep asking myself the same two questions:

• Where do they make their voices heard?
• How can we make meaningful space for them at decision-shaping and decision-making tables?

Our next generation of leaders have lots of ideas and perspectives to share about their future in Calgary’s startup ecosystem, about their future in our Blue Sky City. But are we listening to them?

With a few conferences exploring the future of Calgary over the next month, who will have a seat at these tables? As leaders, we are certainly expected to share insights and perspectives, but we have another duty: to share these spaces with the next generation, for the next generation.

Emerging voices improve decisions and strengthen ecosystems.

If people will live with the consequences of the decisions we make today, shouldn’t they be intimately involved in shaping that future?

When you are actively engaged in shaping the future, you tend to remain engaged to see it happen. When you have a hand in building something, you have a reason to stay, and for Calgary that matters.

Attracting talented people is one thing. Giving them reasons to build, contribute and stay is another. What if we shared these spaces to give emerging voices a platform?

The world around us is moving and changing at incredible speed. As a geologist, the term tectonic shift seems rather appropriate. How should we prepare to be a “future-fit society”? What if we listened more closely to those who will spend most of their lives dealing with a world in constant and accelerating change?

There is a striking paradox — that our emerging leaders are rapidly advancing technologies to build the future while preparing to live with the consequences of those technologies. That makes their perspectives valuable, not because they have all the answers, but because they are asking different questions.

And aren’t they the ones best equipped to shape the future?

Here is my challenge to my fellow Calgary leaders: Bring one new leader to your next meeting, event or conversation. Ask what you are missing and then listen.

A seat at the table isn’t meaningful if we are only asking someone to listen. It’s meaningful when we’re willing to listen to them, too. Calgary’s future will be shaped by the decisions we make today. But it will be lived out by the people coming next. Let’s give them more of a front-row seat and a hand in building it.

Calgary doesn’t have a shortage of people thinking about its future. A sound investment for our future will be the inclusion of those voices.

We will all be richer for it.

Guy Levesque is the executive director of the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking at the University of Calgary.