Ian Jarvis is now the CEO of TransLink. Before that, the Chief Financial Officer at Metro Vancouver – the regional district. And it was there that he learned some of the techniques of ‘agenda management’ – lessons he gave away at a roast of Johnny Carline, previous Metro bureaucratic head, on his retirement.
Writer Richard Littlemore lays it out deliciously in this B.C. Business profile of Carol Mason, the new CEO of Metro:
One purely jocular reference brought the house down during a series of roasts at Carline’s going-away party. It came from former GVRD/Metro Vancouver CFO and now TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis, who spoke of the great lessons he had learned from past bosses.
Asking, rhetorically, what he had learned from Johnny Carline, Jarvis proceeded to enumerate the lessons, including such strategies as “agenda management – placing strategic investment and budget decisions after debates on off-leash dog bylaws.”
Other lessons Jarvis attributed to Carline include remembering that “numbers get in the way of a good story – never, never ever mix numbers with strategy.”
And, according to Jarvis, the biggest lesson of all: “procedural quagmire – the art of knowing when to refer procedural issue to the corporate secretary, and then watching the debate turn into a series of votes on amendments to amendments, knowing full well that, in the end, you’re going to get a resolution that can be interpreted any way you like.”
