Zita Cobb, the celebrated social entrepreneur, founder of the world-renowned Fogo Island Inn, former executive at JDS Uniphase and guest speaker at the spring 2019 Chancellor’s Debate, learned what leadership felt like long before she heard the word used. To this day she feels strongly that actions speak for themselves, whereas words are not always to be trusted.
“Leadership,” she recently told the Gazette over the phone, “is one of those things like love and sustainability and a whole bunch of other words that have lost their meaning because they have been badly used. I think it’s important that people understand what leadership really is.”
And what is it, according to Zita Cobb?
We found out when she addressed uOttawa on March 20 alongside Calin Rovinescu who, in addition to being uOttawa’s chancellor, is also the CEO of Air Canada. Together, they discussed the essential purpose of business in a conversation titled Beyond Lip Service: Strategic Leadership and Fundamental Sustainability in a Cynical Age.
So, what is leadership to Zita Cobb? In response, she tells a story…
“You know I grew up in a very particular situation on Fogo Island (in Newfoundland), the daughter of someone who made a living going out on the North Atlantic on a little wooden boat. We were seven children, which was a fairly small family, and when he made the decision about when he was going to go out, when he thought the weather was safe – and sometimes he would take some of my brothers – well, he understood what he was doing. I used to think ‘my god if I was him I think I’d hide under the bed’ because it was all so frightening. But he never hid under the bed. He saw what needed to be done, saw what would happen to us if he didn’t do it, and he went and did it.”
“Whereas, I think there’s often a kind of strange thing that happens when you put a group of people together. Because what happens is that people stand around and say ‘hmm, this needs to be done.’ And I mean people aren’t blind, they can see what needs to be done. But not all the time, maybe not even half the time will someone say ‘OK, well, why not me? I can do this. And I’m going to do this. Because I believe it needs to be done. And I’m not going to wait around for someone else to do it, or to be given some kind of blessing.”
“And again, from my dad I learned a view of the world that says ‘well if not me then who?’ I can’t hold anyone else accountable for how I think the world should be if I haven’t given my level best every day.”
Zita Cobb’s integrity, ideas and vision – and above all her actions – have made her a leader of the social entrepreneurship movement, which she practises as well as preaches, having personally invested 40 million dollars in building a sustainable world-class community-driven business in her tiny home town of Fogo Island. She is whipsmart, outspoken and adamant that business can and must be about building a better world, not just accumulating more shareholder value.
“I think business as a tool is one of the best ones we have invented,” she says. “As a set of skills it is one of the best ways of getting things done, of solving problems and of making society stronger. I don’t think there’s a better calling.”
“But it can’t be unconstrained,” she concludes. “Because I think today we’re going through a period of money blindness. We’re money drunk, and we need to grow up quickly. So, I would like us to be a contagious example of how to use money in a way that has a purpose beyond the making of money just for its own sake. Because that’s not a purpose. I don’t know what that is.”