Features Business Labour
From the Editor: November 2016

November 2016 – If there’s a single word to sum up industry leaders, current or emerging, it would be “passion.”

It’s there when you’re talking to them about their business or where they work. It’s there on the trade show floor as they describe new technologies or varieties. It’s there when they outline their latest research or innovations. It’s there during networking breaks at educational sessions.

This year’s Top 10 Under 40 award winners have a true passion for their work. The award winners were officially announced during The Gathering reception of the Canadian Greenhouse Conference last month. The awards program, now in its third year, is sponsored by Paul Boers Manufacturing and Prins Green-
houses and presented by Greenhouse Canada.

They’re entrepreneurs. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality,” said Warren Bennis, “an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of leadership studies,” according to a Wikipedia posting.

Several of this year’s Top 10 Under 40 award recipients launched their own businesses, or are taking existing businesses to the next level.

They’re motivators. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself,” said Jack Welch, a retired American business executive and author. “When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

Training staff to be the best they can be is another key trait of this year’s award winners.

“I never want to give the impression that employees are working for us, but rather with us,” said one award winner.

They bring out the best in others. “Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations,” said Peter Drucker, a U.S. management consultant widely regarded as a driving force behind modern management systems.

They inspire colleagues and business associates.

They’re innovators. “Learning and innovation go hand in hand,” said William Pollard, a U.S. researcher and author. “The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”

Among this year’s Top 10 are those excelling in social media marketing, or mastering emerging new growing systems with which they are truly on the cutting edge, including successful year-round production. “I think it is necessary for a label to have product available 12 months of the year, and the push is for locally grown product as well,” one winner explained.

And the winners enjoy what they do. “Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally,” said noted journalist British journalist David Frost.

To this year’s Top 10 Under 40 award winners, congratulations on what you have already accomplished in your careers. You’re an inspiration to all who work with you.

And we know that the best is yet to come.