Good morning.
RBC CEO Dave McKay was with a group of Canadian CEOs recently when a “very senior” leader said, “You're not serious people.” The speaker wasn’t talking about humor, though I’d argue Canadians are among the funniest people in the world. “The message was you're out of sync with your largest trading partner”—the U.S.
That’s a bold thing to say to the head of Canada’s largest bank, the 160-year-old Royal Bank of Canada, that’s been trading at record highs and ranks among the most successful banks in the world. But McKay took those comments to heart because it’s a compelling message that he also believes and conveyed to his peers during our conversation at the Canadian Club in Toronto earlier this week. “We’re definitely on the wrong path,” he said. He wants Canada to adopt a more competitive tax structure and tighter ties to the U.S. (We’ve looked at what’s holding back Canada’s competitiveness before.)
McKay shared some personal anecdotes on stage: He lost his dad at the age of 12. As a kid, he wanted to be a marine biologist: “I wanted to swim with sharks.” (Having just passed his 10th anniversary as RBC’s president and CEO, some might argue he fulfilled that goal.) And he talked about his approach to leadership. Early on, he set bold ambitions and declared them publicly, which allowed him to break down the resources and people needed to get there.
He puts his leaders on a four-quadrant grid that juxtaposes their personal ambition with organizational ambition. “You need people who want to lead at a bigger level and are willing to take risks,” he says, “and you've got your real team players who have high organizational ambition … They want the company to win and they're invaluable parts of the team.”
There are challenges, of course. The company fired its CFO and another exec for allegedly having an affair. RBC completed the acquisition of HSBC’s Canada operations earlier this year, a deal that some U.K. politicians tried to block.
And what would McKay like to see from his neighbors to the south? “I want to see a note of American expansion, not retreat,” says McKay. “We need a strong America that's in an expansionary global mode and protects democracy and stands up for the rules of democracy.”
Separately, in this week’s Leadership Next podcast, I speak with JCPenney CEO Marc Rosen about how he revived the troubled brand by focusing on “America’s working-class families.”
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Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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