McStay on What Matters

Ian Morgan of Next Architecture on renovating Edmonton’s law courts without closing them, putting AI to work on RFPs, and why a flat, mid-sized firm is a competitive advantage. Ian trained at the Bartlett and in Cardiff, landed in Edmonton in 2002, and in 2016 co-founded Next Architecture with Alan Partridge, carrying forward a legacy that traces back to 1938. Thirty-four years into his career, he...

Most owners know succession planning matters. Almost none of them actually do it. In this episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean McStay sits down with Mike Mack, founder and president of X5 Management and author of the new book Succession, to unpack the conversation most founders avoid: what happens to the business when you are no longer the one holding it together. They get into why succession i...

Tony Chapman is a Marketing Hall of Legends inductee, entrepreneur, and host of Chatter That Matters. In this conversation we get into what it actually takes to earn attention in a world drowning in noise, why "too big to fail" has become "too slow to react," and how AI is reshaping who thrives and who gets replaced. Tony shares his head, heart, and hands framework for decision-making, why curiosi...

Steve Cadigan, former Chief HR Officer at LinkedIn and author of Workquake , joins me to talk about what leaders are getting wrong about talent, development, and the future of work. We discuss why one-size-fits-all talent strategies are failing, why people are increasingly loyal to learning and growth rather than companies, and why organizations will not be able to recruit their way out of the acc...

In the third episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean sits down with Glenn Lesko, a partner at Pender and Howe and executive recruitment specialist with nearly three decades of experience finding and assessing senior leaders, to talk about judgment. What does it actually mean to use good judgment, and how do leaders develop it over time? Glenn shares how understanding an organization goes far deepe...

In the second episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean sits down with Jason Donkersgoed, a leadership coach and consultant with over 30 years of experience leading teams across retail, finance, and higher education, to talk about reality in leadership. What happens when leaders avoid naming what everyone already sees? Jason shares what he has learned about surfacing difficult truths, building the t...

In the first episode of McStay on What Matters, Sean sits down with Chris Ballard, former Ontario cabinet minister turned CEO and consultant, to talk about presence in leadership. What does it actually look like when a leader is fully in the room versus performing being in the room? Chris shares what he learned about presence through politics, public service, corporate governance, and the transiti...