The latest message from Owen Charters, President & CEO, BGC Canada (May 29). Full transcript below.
Pablo Picasso once said, “What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”
Today is the Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada Annual General Meeting. AGMs are a time to reflect, a time to celebrate and measure what you did against what you intended to do in the prior year.
It is good to celebrate. It’s good to take time to look at your accomplishments and consider whether they measured up to expectations.
And an AGM is also a time where many words are spoken—words about what we will do, what we intend to do.
But we all know that actions speak louder than words. A blogger I follow, James Clear, asked “If someone could only see my actions and not hear my words, what would they say are my priorities?”
Our priorities are what we do. They are also the choices we make by choosing what not to do.
2020 is a year of stark choices. A year of making decisions that are difficult, tough, and under circumstances that no one asked for.
We now must take actions to be, to do. We must pursue courses of action that will create the future we want as we enter a new world, a changed society, a struggling economy.
Today we celebrate a year that was. But the year that is will not compare—it requires new, different priorities. It requires us to be different. To choose differently. To reset expectations, but not to reach any less high. To be people of action, not just words. To choose priorities that set us on a path of ambition, recovery, and again, growth.
Onward.
Stay safe, stay strong.
